Akuma Amalgam
by usagi-strike
Summary: Fairies are the children of angels and demons, and she isn't your typical akuma-killing "pixie". There seems to be a secret under that cherubic little face... is our heroine a God send, or an abomination? wisely x oc x lavi, one of which is toootally one-sided...
1. A Continuation of Awkward Silences

**Here's a rewritten version of the first chapter. Sorry for those who will see this as repetitive!**

**As I said before, I'm going to keep the pairing a secret to make it all the SWEETER~!**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Kyoko, Pichoncho).**

**these things are line breaks → wO**

A Continuation of Awkward Silences

_Pain. Nothing but pain. She would have screamed if she could've found the energy._

_Struggling to breathe, a gurgle of blood made its way up her throat and spilled down her motionless, immovable lips. She couldn't move, couldn't say what she needed to say…_

_She watched in silent horror as the woman, in her bloody, torturously broken body, crawled closer and closer to her. She couldn't hear what she was saying. She _needed_ to hear what she was saying…_

"…" _the woman's lips moved, but she couldn't hear, couldn't _understand_…_

"_K…o, get…ready…"_

"Kumori-chan, get up already!" Someone forcefully ripped the blanket off of her, interrupting the dream. "Do you plan to sleep the entire _day_ away?"

"I do, actually." So cold, she thought. Where was Pichoncho?

"Really? That's too bad. I heard that Jerry was trying out some new recipes and was looking for a certain _someone_ to sample them…"

Kumori jumped up. "Why didn't you say so sooner?!"

"You never asked, of course," Kyoko-chan snorted as Kumori quickly jimmied out of her jammies and into a short, lacy black Goth Lolita, hurriedly adding a couple of necklaces to the black choker around her neck. The pendant hanging from it—a silver pentagram—flickered within the tangle of darkness.

She shook out her hair, waving away the few remaining wisps of the strange dream.

"Almost done… gotta hurry, gotta hurry, gotta hurry—let's go!" Kumori cried, yanking a stiff Kyoko and Pichoncho, a four-foot tall rabbit plush, out the door. They quickly made their way past Finders and scientists, some of whom were just barely getting out of bed and some of whom seemed as if they hadn't slept a wink.

"Kumori, stop going so fast—" the black-haired girl admonished, adjusting her glasses so as to keep them from flying off her face.

"Ne, ne, what's Jerry have for me? Is it dessert?!" Already, Kumori could feel her tummy growing hungry at the prospect of delicious food, even of the human variety.

"I-I don't know, he didn't say…"Kyoko-chan slowly replied, a peculiar, dreamy look appearing in her eyes. Kumori frowned slightly and looked down the hall. And gasped.

"There were no new recipes, were there?!" Kumori hissed. "It was just about—"

"Shhh! Don't you dare say it out loud, or so help me—!"

"Ah, good morning, Kyoko, Kumori."

"G-good morning, Reever-san!" Kyoko breathily responded, not like her usual stiff, proper self. She didn't bother finishing the rest of her threat. It was implied.

Kumori pouted. She'd been dragged out of bed for no reason, then?

"What's wrong, Kumori-chan?" Reever-san asked, concern etched on his face. For some reason, Reever had a soft spot for the little pixie exorcist. Many of those at the Order did, actually. There was just something really endearing about her, this _innocence…_

"N-nothing," she perkily replied. It wasn't his fault she wasn't getting food… "Just a little _hungry_." Kyoko ignored the pointed glares that went along with those venomous words.

"You owe me a favor!" Kumori hissed at the other exorcist.

"Um-hm." Kumori frowned at Kyoko's lack of conviction. She murmured a quick "G'bye then, Reever-san!" and then suddenly jumped up and planted a big, sloppy kiss on the blond Australian's cheek.

"_K-Kumori!_"

"That was punishment for lying to me!" Kumori yelled over her shoulder at an outraged Kyoko and surprised Reever. Exorcists stared as the small, petite girl with short, shockingly-bright pink hair and an enormous pink rabbit plush tucked under one arm ran cackling evilly to the cafeteria, an angry, black-haired girl hot on her heels.

**OxO**

"Morning, Kumo-chan!" Lavi-kun exclaimed, pouncing on his favorite pink-haired pixie. He stared as Kyoko set her tray down beside them with a loud thump. "What's up? Why's Kyoko-chan so mad?" He stage-whispered.

Kumori glanced at Kyoko, who stolidly ignored the both of them. She waited a second more and then shrugged when the black-haired girl showed no signs of bothering to answer.

"I kissed her crush." Kumori mumbled around a mouthful of stroganoff.

"Really? Who does Kyoko-chan like?"

Kumori cast a sly glance at Kyoko. "It's—Mph!"

Lavi looked on in mild amusement as Kyoko caught Kumori in a stranglehold, one hand covering

Kumori's mouth, a dark aura suddenly engulfing them.

"Kumori-chan, don't you _dare_, or else—Gah!" Kyoko gasped, dropping her suddenly wet, salivated hand. "H-how disgusting, Kumori! That is so unladylike!"

Kumori stuck her tongue out petulantly at the raven-haired exorcist while Lavi laughed. "And… why'd you kiss him, Kumo-chan?"

"Cuz she lied to me—about FOOD!"

"Oh, really? You must love to eat then, huh, Kumo-chan?"

"Mm-hm!" Kumori replied, shoving more delicious beef stroganoff with sour cream and onions into her mouth. "Ne—Nii-sama said not to be wasteful with food, because you never know when you might get some more. So I was really excited when Kyoko told me we were gonna get some samples…"

"Nii-sama?" Lavi-kun asked, quirking his eyebrow at her. "Who's that?"

She beamed at him. "Nii-sama is—ah, I forgot." Kumori sighed. "It's a _secret._"

"Come on, Kumo-chan! Tell me?" Lavi asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"I promised not to… gomen ne, Usagi-chan." Unlike with Yuu, Lavi didn't mind when Kumori called him a rabbit. She made it sound so sweet and endearing.

"Ah, really? Well, can't have you breaking those precious promises though, can we?"

Lavi looked down at the plates piled up high around on the table around her and chuckled. "You know, Kumo-chan, when it comes to food, you and Allen are so similar!" She probably had a parasitic-type anti-Akuma weapon, too.

"Allen-kun?" Kumori asked, tilting her head.

"Ah, I forgot! You came here after Allen left."

Kumori frowned. "Who's that?" All she knew was that Allen was the one Yuu Kanda and Johnny Gil had chased after.

"A former exorcist," Kyoko muttered stiffly, disgust pinching up her already tight face, "who abandoned the cause."

"That _former exorcist_," Lavi-kun drawled, "is my _friend_." There was a subtle warning in his voice, a warning which Kyoko ignored.

"It doesn't matter who it is," Kyoko snapped. "Anyone who abandons the Order is an enemy of the Order, which includes that idiot pair Kanda and Gil. The command has been released that, should we see any one of them, we're to use any means possible to capture them and bring them back for interrogation."

"You sure are harsh," Lavi-kun replied, eyeing her.

"I'm just saying the truth," Kyoko defensively responded.

"You know, Kyoko-_chan_, maybe the reason why you don't have much friends is because you have such little loyalty or consideration for people," Kumori sighed, making figure-eights in her drink with a straw.

Kyoko gasped. "Kumori—!"

"Now, now, Kumo-chan, no need to be mean..."

"She deserved it!" Kumori huffed, noisily sucking up the remnants of her drink.

"As if I _deserved_ that—?" She was interrupted by the madly flailing arms of a pink rabbit plush. Lavi-kun stifled a laugh as Pichoncho's arm, with the help of Kumori, jabbed Kyoko in the chest.

"Uh-huh! Kyoko-chan was being mean and cruel, talking bad about Usagi-chan's nakamae!"

"You two are so—so unbelievable!" Kyoko sputtered, picking up her tray, her propriety melting away in the face of her shock and indignation. "You two bakas are so, so—so unbelievably immature and ignorant! Neither of you understand just how much the Order has done for us, for all of us!"

"Kyoko-chan, wait—!" Lavi-kun sighed as Kyoko stalked off in an angry huff. He turned around. "Kumo-chaaan…"

"Nani?"

"We're going to have to apologize to her."

"B-but—she was being mean, Usa-chan! About your _nakamae!_"

"Still," Lavi-kun replied. "Kyoko-chan's our nakamae too, right?"

"I-I suppose…" Kumori mumbled. She held up the pink plush toy. "What do _you_ think, Pichoncho?"

Lavi-kun didn't see how, but Kumori made the enormous rabbit nod its head. She frowned, as if she hadn't expected that answer.

"Kumo-chan, you're just too cute!" He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and squeezed, his eyes taking in a bit of pale white skin peeking out from the sheer lace she was wearing.

"Usagi-chan is cute, too!" she said, snuggling in closer to him. Lavi felt his face slowly heating up. Hopefully, she wouldn't notice his heart starting to beat a little faster in his chest.

"Kumori-chan!" Kumori and Lavi-kun looked up as someone called her name. It was Lenalee.

"Ah, gomen ne, Usa-chan!" He reluctantly let his arms fall as she squirmed out of his warm grasp. "I forgot, Komui-san told me to meet with Lena-chan today." He blushed slightly as she planted a big kiss on his cheek. He'd noted early on that it was a habit of Kumori's to kiss people, regardless of gender. Kyoko shouldn't have been that surprised, really, if Kumori kissed her crush. "Bye-bye!"

"See ya!" Lavi smiled as Kumori bounded away to join Lenalee.

Because of her height, baby-doll features, and cutesy demeanor, people often mistook her for an adorable little child. They were always surprised to find out she was a teenager with a blunt, caustic tongue.

At first he'd thought she was a kid, too.

His smile dimmed a bit as a memory rose unbidden to the surface. The first time they'd met.

There'd been a lot of yelling when she'd came, Kumori. A lot of fear. The Gatekeeper had identified her as something other than human, and Lavi, being the closest on-hand exorcist, had gone out to get rid of it, of her. When he'd gotten to the gate, he'd come face to face with an emaciated, grime-encrusted girl, little more than a child it had seemed, although he knew better now.

Despite her horrid appearance, she'd given off the aura of an otherworldly fairy, one that would fly out of his grasp if given half the chance during a moment of inattentiveness. That was until he'd noticed her eyes, a bright amber beacon in the blind, stifling darkness.

It was the eyes that set him off.

Just when Lavi was about to kill her, the moon escaped the cover of the clouds and illuminated the scene, allowing him to see that, although she had amber eyes, the girl didn't have the dark skin of a Noah.

It was an understatement to say that Lavi-kun had been surprised when, after stopping his attack, the girl had hugged him.

In his anger, he hadn't even noticed that she hadn't laid a hand against him til that moment. That gentle embrace had hurt worse than any wound she could've given him.

He cringed at the memory of her bright amber eyes smiling up at him, tears streaming down the sides of her face, a whispered "thank you" escaping from her lips.

He'd promised the both of them that he'd do whatever he could to never, ever let her get hurt like that again.

She'd forgiven him, of course—it hadn't taken long, despite the fact that Kumo-chan was the kind of person who could hold a grudge for eternity if the offense was bad enough; she caved easily in the face of food and bright, shiny objects—but Lavi-kun still felt guilty over it sometimes. It was hard to forget that you'd almost killed the girl you love.

**.**

Kumori trotted alongside Lenalee. It was sort of hard to keep up—Lenalee was considerably much taller than her—but Kumori was fine. This was training, in a way.

"So, what are we going to do, Lena-chan?"

"Well, Nii-san told me to help you with developing your Innocence, since we haven't really identified it yet."

"Ne, Lena-chan, who's Allen Walker? Usa-chan says I'm just like him." Kumori bumped into a solid wall of flesh as Lenalee suddenly stopped in her tracks.

"H-How's that?" Lenalee asked, her voice a mix of surprise and something else.

"Usa-chan says I eat lotsa food like Allen-kun."

Lenalee smiled. "Ah, is that so… Well, parasitic-type accommodators eat a lot because they burn more energy than other type users."

"Ne, ne, Lenalee-chan, what type are you then?"

"I'm a crystal-type."

"Crystal-type…" Kumori repeated. She liked the way the words felt on her tongue.

They walked on in companionable silence to the training hall, and after a moment's silence, Lenalee voiced the questions going on round in her head.

"Say, Kumori-chan…"

"Uhn?"

"I couldn't help but notice when I came to the dining hall that you, Lavi-kun, and Kyoko-chan were having some sort of argument… what happened?"

Kumori puckered her face. "Kyoko-chan's mad at me."

"Eh, why?"

"Well, there's two reasons why…" she paused. At Lenalee's encouraging nod, Kumori went on. "I told her she's mean and inconsiderate and that's why people don't like her."

Lenalee reeled back in shock. "W-why'd you say that?"

"She was saying heartless things to Usa-chan about Allen-kun, calling him a traitor, and, and… she was hurting Usa-chan, and I couldn't stand it!"

Lenalee's face fell, and tears started forming. "Well… you can't help how people are taking the situation about Allen Walker, Kumori-chan. People will say what they want, even if it hurts others." Kumori blushed at the slight reprimand in her voice. "We can't change how people feel."

"Still…"

"Well, you have to understand where Kyoko's coming from," Lenalee admitted, glancing at Kumori. At her blank look, Lenalee elaborated.

"Kyoko Kawasaki was brought into the Order as a starving, dirty little girl roaming the streets alone after her family abandoned her."

"Really? I-I never knew that…"

"It would've been too painful for her to bring up."

"H-How do you know, then?"

"I was here when she was brought in," Lenalee confessed. "I was lucky enough to have Nii-san with me. She had no one, and when she had nowhere to go, the Order kindly took her in. For someone like her whose only family has been the Order, someone _leaving_ the Order is like her family abandoning her all over again."

They walked in silence for a few seconds before Lenalee spoke. "You said there were two reasons…?"

"Ah, uhn. I-I sorta… kissed the guy she likes. On purpose," she replied.

"Oh, I see." Lenalee gave an embarrassed laugh. "I guess if I were her, I'd be angry, too, especially if my friend did it, knowing how I feel about him." Upon saying this, her face darkened.

Kumori nodded. "I know." But she didnn't. Not really. She paused before asking, "So, Lena-chan has someone she likes too?"

Lenalee started and looked at her out of the corner of her eye. "What—?"

"Does Kumori know who Lena-chan likes?"

"I-I don't—?"

"Is it Allen-kun?" Lenalee's blush was answer enough.

Kumori giggled. "Ne, ne, does Komui-san know?"

"No," Lenalee gasped, "and I'd like to keep it that way!" They both laughed at the mental image of Komui Lee finding out his adorable little sister had fallen in love without his permission, and with one of the most wanted fugitives of the Black Order, no less!

Lenalee wiped tears of mirth from her face and glanced down at Kumori. "How about you, Kumori-chan? Do you have anyone you love?"

"Well, I love Jerry …" Lenalee stumbled, and Kumori had to go back and help the girl up to her feet.

"J-Jerry?!" Lenalee coughed, her face turning bright red.

"Uhn! Cuz he makes me lots of food! And I love Usa-chan too, cuz—"

Lenalee laughed, relieved for some reason. "That's not what I meant! I meant, do you love anyone the way I love… you-know-who?"

Kumori scrunched up her face. "I don't think so…" There was _that_ person, but she couldn't tell anyone about him. Plus, he didn't really _count_, since she didn't love him the way Lenalee seemed to love this Allen fellow.

"Really?" Lenalee replied, surprised. "That's too bad… I thought you and Lavi-kun were pretty close."

Kumori smiled. "Uhn, Usa-chan and I are best friends."

"Just friends, nothing more?"

"Uhn!" _How could people be more than friends?_ Kumori asked herself.

Lenalee gave her a slightly puzzled, skeptical frown. "If you say so…"

"Usa-chan and I are just friends." Even if Lavi somehow ended up "loving" her—the chances of that happening were as likely as the Black Order being overrun by zombies—nothing could amount from a "love" between them, or anyone like him. Her secret wouldn't allow it.

**O.O**

Kumori smiled wickedly as she and Lenalee fought. Excitement, mixed with exhilaration and adrenaline, coursed through her. She wasn't even using Innocence, but that was fine. It'd been a long time since she'd had this much fun.

"Sorry to interrupt your duel, Lenalee," a voice called out from the darkness around them, "but Komui-san wants Kumo-chan to head to his office."

It took Kumori little more than a second to recognize Lavi and come hurtling towards him like a human cannon.

"Usagi-chan!" she cried, nearly bowling him over, she was so happy.

"Hi, Lavi-kun!"

"That's fine," Lenalee replied, giving Lavi-kun a warm smile as he stepped out into the light, Kumori seemingly attached to his hip. "We were just about done, anyways."

Kumori's hand latched onto Lavi's, and her smile grew bigger. She turned towards Lenalee. "That was fun, Lena-chan! I wanna do that again soon!"

"Sure, whenever you're ready!" Lenalee replied, waving goodbye to them as they left.

"Say, Usagi-chan, what does Komui-san want me for?" Kumori asked, looking up at the tall red-head as they walked past the stone pillars of the training hall.

"You're goin' on a mission," Lavi-kun replied, beaming at her.

**Ow**

Supervisor Komui Lee was quietly sipping coffee when there was an impatient knock on his door.

"Come in," he replied. He wasn't surprised to see Kumori-chan burst into the room, Lavi-kun not far behind.

"Ne, Komui-san, Lavi-kun said you have a job for me?" the pink-haired girl asked, flitting around his desk like the pixie many of them thought her to be. "Ne, ne, what is it, Komui-san?"

He smiled patiently at her. "I'll let you know once the last member of your party is here… Ah, here we are."

Kumori frowned as Kyoko-chan walked through the door.

"Pardon my lateness," she murmured, not sparing Lavi of Kumori a glance. She didn't bother replying when Lavi-kun smiled and said "Hey, Kyoko-chan!"

Kumori pouted, pulling her facial features into an attractively unattractive duck face.

"Now that we have all of you here…" Komui-san said, ignoring the suddenly tense atmosphere, "we would like Kumori and Kyoko-chan here to go on a mission for us. It's a simple retrieval of Innocence."

"No Lavi?" Kumori inquired, puffing up her cheeks.

"Ah, no. The two of you will be able to complete this on your own. Also, Lavi's needed elsewhere at the moment." He gave the redheaded exorcist a significant look, and Lavi, taking this as his cue to leave, gave them all a lopsided grin.

"See ya, Kumo-chan." He gave her a tight, lingering embrace before turning to wave a brief goodbye to Kyoko and Komui. The Supervisor smiled at them as the door closed with an almost inaudible click.

"Now then, all the necessary information needed for this mission is in these," he said, handing the both of them small, compact portfolios. "The small town of Fierre has been experiencing occurrences in which the townspeople have been undergoing strange physical phenomena."

"Strange physical phenomena?" Kyoko asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Kumori continued playing with the arms of the pink rabbit plush toy.

"Yes, strange physical phenomena as in, the townspeople suddenly grew the ability to defy the laws of gravity."

"They can fly?!" Kumori asked, interest suddenly piquing.

Kumori's bright eyes fell as Komui-san chuckled and corrected her. "Not quite. In certain areas of town, the townspeople just suddenly find themselves floating or levitating. This is quite entertaining until they pass the limits of the Innocence and plummet to the earth."

"I take it there've been several of those accidents?" Kyoko asked, her face twisting distastefully.

"Unfortunately, yes. People just can't seem to restrain themselves, despite the warnings."

"So," Kyoko primly asked, turning the conversation back towards the topic of Innocence, "the closer they get to the Innocence, the higher they're able to 'fly,' right?"

"Not necessarily," Komui-san admitted. "There are certain instances in which the field of levitation suddenly _drops_ despite the proximity of the Innocence, so there are quite a number of unexpected deaths where one had thought the field of levitation to be solid."

There was an awkward silence, and then Komui-san beamed at them. "Well, good luck then, you two! I expect you'll be back in no time!"

Maybe as a mass of bloody pulp scraped off the sidewalk, Kyoko thought.


	2. Life-changing Discoveries

**Hey. Second chapter, here you are. Didn't get round to it for a while cuz I kept getting distracted by all the other (much better) DGM fanfics out there (like "obey the twisted fate").**

**My bad if people are waaay OOC! I'm new at this, so excuse me~! Oh yeah, this is an AU sorta, so… don't be surprised if it sorta strays from the actual storyline.**

**DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN DGM. ALL CHARACTERS IN THIS WORK (EXCLUDING MY OCs KUMORI AND KYOKO) ARE NOT MINE AND ARE PROPERTY OF KATSURA HOSHINO.**

**Well! I'll try not to ramble next time. You may commence reading now. Hope yall enjoy and keep reading. Reviews and tips and other little tidbits would be MUCH appreciated, so post away!**

**O.O**

Life-changing Discovery

The two Exorcists and one rabbit plush strolled through the town—well, more like pushed and shoved their way through. There seemed to be some sort of festival going on, which explained the excitement and delight of the people packed closely together around them. Unlike the others elbowing their way through the streets, they weren't there to enjoy the festivities. They'd endured an awkward, four hour-long train ride to the town so that they could look for an Innocence that had a gravitational field of its own.

The awkward silence was stifling, and the silent Finder that had accompanied them wasn't doing much to lighten the mood, so Kumori decided to ask something that had been on her mind for a while now. "Say… what does Allen-kun look like?" she asked, looking at Kyoko.

"He has white hair and a red pentacle above his left eye," Kyoko stiffly responded, her eyes raking over the faces of those rushing around them.

"Ah, okay." They continued on in awkward silence for a bit, and then—

"Say, Kyoko-chan…"

"If you have something to say, say it already!" the other girl snappishly replied.

Kumori pouted but continued. "I-I'm sorry, about before… saying you had no friends and stuff? That was mean, what you said to Usa-chan, but that was mean too—and about kissing, you know, Reever-san, so…" She paused, looking at Kyoko-chan to gauge her reaction. "Kyoko-chaaan…?"

Kyoko huffed before finally looking at her. "Okay, okay, you're forgiven, now stop talking and pay attention! And… I'm sorry, too, so—"

"Thank you, Kyoko-chaaan!"

"Kumori-chan, get off of me!" Kyoko cried, blushing. "This is UNDIGNIFIED! Stop it!"

"Hai, hai~!" Kumori replied, letting go of Kyoko-chan and instead hugging Pichoncho closer to her. Kyoko, noticing this, pursed her lips.

"Kumori-chan, you might find this intrusive and offensive, but why do you carry that rabbit plush around? It makes you seem all the more childish." Not to mention that the high, lilting voice she affected made her sound like a little eight-year-old.

Kumori smiled at her, unperturbed by the barb. "Pichoncho is a precious gift from Ne—Nii-san." Kyoko heard Kumori stumble over the words, but she ignored it. They had a job to do. She could press Kumori later for more information on this mysterious "Nii-san."

"Kumori-chan, why aren't you wearing your uniform?" Kyoko hadn't asked until then because she'd still been giving the pink-haired girl the cold shoulder. She spared a look at Kumori's outfit—a lacy black, knee-length Gothic Lolita with far too many girlish frills accompanied by an adorably small black hat with netting, floral print black lace armguards and tights, and black pumps that looked like they'd be very uncomfortable to _walk_ in, much less fight _akuma_ in. Kumori had even added a black cat tail and a matching pair of ears to the outfit.

"Ah! Cute, ne~?" Kumori smiled. "Komui-san said that for this mission I shouldn't wear the uniform since there've been rumors of a person fitting Allen Walker's descriptions here, so, since he's never met me, I might be able to sneak up on him if he's still here, and that won't work if I wear the uniform, so—"

"Okay, okay, I get the message." Kyoko replied, wanting to go back to looking for flying townspeople. Kumori had other plans in mind, though.

"Lookie all the pretty stuuuff," Kumori gaped, her head twisting around constantly to look at the colorful, vibrant garlands and lanterns festooning the buildings and carts around them.

"Kumori, pay attention!"

"Hai, hai…"

"We may not be the only ones looking for it, so you need to keep your eyes open for anything strange." Her instructions were met with silence, the clamor of the crowd the only reply.

"Kumori-chan, pay attention and stop—!" Kyoko turned around to find she was alone. The pixie was nowhere to be found. Even the silent Finder had disappeared.

"Kumori? _Kumori!_"

"Damn it!" Kyoko muttered. She wouldn't be able to find the short exorcist, not in this crowd.

**.**

"**Kumori!**"

"Nani, nani?" Kumori wiped her lips. That'd been a tasty little snack.

She turned around and paused. She jumped up onto the tips of her lace-covered toes, not even reaching the shoulders of those around her. Where was Kyoko?

"Kyoko-chaaan?" She tried to push past the men blocking her way and instantly regretted it when they knocked her to the ground. Pichoncho, thankfully, broke her fall.

"Owie, owie!" Kumori pouted. "So _mean—!_" Kumori immediately clutched the pink rabbit plush closer to her chest, a meager shield to the suddenly oppressive feeling in the air. She'd felt something similar to this once, a long time ago, but time had not dimmed the memory. She could still easily identify a Noah's presence.

Would they be able to identify _her_ as easily as she had _them?_

Her heart pounding, she looked up, up, up… into the face of two tall, dark-skinned men, one of whom had dark, raven blue-black hair and the other a tawny gold.

"Hey, watch where you're going!" the raven-haired one snapped in a belligerent tone.

She crinkled her amber eyes at them. They weren't really _men_—more like boy-men. They were dressed oddly, too, in revealing white clothing. A slight flush crept up her face as she tried—unsuccessfully, she might add—not to stare at their yummy, well-muscled abdomens. She shook her head, much to the confusion of the two boy-men.

The blond bent down, his eyes level with hers, and took a close look before turning to the other. "Debitto, she feels weird. I can't tell her Level, and she feels like an—"

"Doesn't matter! We needa go find _it_ and finish the mission, else the Earl'll be pissed at us again!"

Kumori's interest peaked at the word. "Su-sumimasen, Noah-sama!" she giggled airily, brushing off her dress as she stood up and drew their attention dangerously back to her. It was a good thing she'd taken Komui-san's advice and not worn the Black Order uniform. "Ne, ne, Noah-sama said you were looking for Innocence—may I offer some assistance?"

The two turned away, and she strained her ears to hear their muffled conversation. She only caught random bits and pieces, like—

"—_weird feeling…"_

"_Jasdero, we gotta—"_

"—_exorcist!"_

She tried not to jump in surprise when they suddenly turned around and glared at her appraisingly.

"Okay then! You can help, even though you seem useless," Debitto snapped, pointing an accusing finger at her. Jasdero looked on, the doubt on his face clearing up in a matter of seconds, as if he'd forgotten the reason why he'd been uncertain.

"Thank you for the honor, Noah-sama!" she responded enthusiastically, grabbing both their hands as she did, though how she managed that with a ginormous rabbit plush in one hand was beyond us human folk.

"We're looking for Innocence," Jasdero muttered, eyeing her hand on his. The pair seemed uncomfortable with the contact, but Kumori didn't notice.

"Let's go, let's go!" she giggled, skipping forward. She didn't know how she would lose the two later once they found the Innocence for her, but when the time came, she had to think of something. Kumori didn't have much experience with Noah other than the one, but she was pretty sure that they didn't take kindly to deceit and theft—particularly if they were the butt of those offenses.

**.O**

The high noon sun shown down on the trio as they stumbled through the still-bustling streets, townsmen and tourists alike avoiding them. No one wanted to cross them, particularly the infuriated little pixie, who looked like she'd be casting hexes and cursing people at the slightest offense.

"Ahhh, I'm hungryyy!" she whined under her breath. They'd been going at it for more than an hour already, and yet they still hadn't managed to run into the levitation field of the Innocence yet, nor had they seen anyone else run into it or fall from it.

Smiling happily and emptily at the world around her, she strained her ears to hear the whispered conversation of the Noah behind her.

"_Hey, Debi, can we keep her, hii?"_

"_Don't you still have that kitty I got you?"_

"_One of the stupid akuma maids touched it. Can I have _this_ kitty? It's really cute, hii…"_

Kumori tittered and then covered her mouth when her tummy rumbled.

"Say, mister!" she piped, startling the robust, middle-aged vendor selling meat buns a couple feet ahead of her. She must've sounded like a whistle. "Gimme ten of those, please!"

"A-are you sure—?"

"Why wouldn't I be sure?" Kumori snapped, the hunger gnawing at her belly causing her replies to be shriller and sharper than intended.

The man stared as she grabbed the meat buns from him and dumped coin into his outstretched hand, his eyes widening as Kumori playfully slapped Jasdero's hand away when it strayed too close to her meal. His eyes widened in astonishment at her audacity, and his jaw dropped.

"Nuh-uh!" she sniffed, eyeing him as she rapidly stuffed an entire bun into her mouth.

Debitto frowned. "Oi—!"

"Kidding!" she giggled, handing a happy Jasdero four meat buns. "Noah-sama—"

Abruptly, her body was wracked by an intense pain, a sudden awareness, and she toppled over into the pair of boy-men, the handful of meat buns flying out of her hands.

"What the—?!" the black-haired one cried out, catching her in his arms.

Her breathing came out in a breathy rasp as waves of power enveloped her. This presence felt familiar, like, like that of—

"I-it _can't_ be—" But as immediately as it had come, that flash of power and recognition flitted away. Kumori swiftly shot to her feet and took off, leaving the astonished pair in a tangle of limbs on the ground behind her. She roughly, rudely shoved people out of her way, not caring if they fell or not—all she cared about at the moment was finding it, finding _him_, the source of that brief lash of power.

Kumori's breaths came out in short, breathy gasps as she heaved through the crowd of stupid, ignorant humans who were happily keeping her from him. She needed to _hurry_. Already, it was fading, and she found only the smallest, slightest traces of it, his power. She ran straight to the edge of the water fountain in the center of the square. She jumped, and for a moment, gravity lost its hold on her, and she sailed through the air with ease in a haze of lace, mist, and wisps of darkness. To the trepidation and shock of those watching her, the petite little girl easily cleared the twenty foot jump from one end of the water fountain to the other. Those who weren't watching her display of superhuman strength quickly cleared out of the way when they saw her falling from the sky.

She landed with a jolt. "Move, move, _move!_" Kumori growled, jostling wayward humans out of her way yet again. A snarl accidentally let loose from her throat, and weak, pathetic humans left and right of her skittered away in mild shock and fear. They had it so _easy—!_

The pounding of her heart nearly drowned out the thud of her heels on the cobblestones. Kumori's eyes welled up with tears as her throat constricted, the scream of frustration building up at the back of her throat threatening to spill out and over her lips. That small trace of power she'd felt before had all but _disappeared_. How was she to find him before _they_ did?

Her head swiveled around, desperately looking for a glimpse, one single glimpse of _him_—and then she did. A brief, black blur, a flash of white—

Hope lent speed and strength to her limbs. Her heart fluttered uncertainly in her chest, and, throwing all caution to the wind, she allowed the scream of hope to break loose from the shackles of fear and disappointment holding it back.

"_**Nea-sama!**_"

Time ground itself to a halt.


	3. Family Reunion

**CHAPTER 3**

**Decided to go back and break all the chapters into smaller segments since I realized I hada alotta mini cliff-hangers and stuff where I disrupted the tension by not ending it there, so yeah. Here. They're shorter, but… what the hell.**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**w**

Family Reunion

The townspeople spared only a passing glance at the petite girl standing stock still in the midst of the hustle and bustle of city life.

Kumori held her breath as the tall figure paused midstride and turned to face her. Time quickly regained equilibrium and resumed its natural course as reality came crashing down around her.

_It wasn't him_, was all Kumori could think. This man could've passed as Nea's twin. He had the same curly hair, the same high cheek bones, the same aquiline nose. The only physical difference was that this guy had a mole under his left eye and his hair was black instead of red. You could tell by his presence that this wasn't Nea Walker, though. This was just a look-alike, a fake, an _imposter_. A lie.

Anger, at herself, at him, welled up in her, and bile rose up in her throat, bitter and rancorous. Her anger was quickly replaced by disappointment and sorrow. So many lies…

Kumori's eyes finally strayed to the imposter's companion, a white-haired fellow. Kumori bit back a hysterical giggle at the irony. Was _that_ Allen Walker, the boy-man with girlish, chin-length white hair—? Her bitter amusement died as she took in the enormous eye on his forehead.

_**Demon Eye Wisely**_**.**

Kumori paled and immediately turned away, allowing the crowd to swallow her up and hide her from the physical gaze of the two Noah. Nea had always told her to avoid other Noah, especially _him_, the mind reader. He was nearly invincible, what with his ability to implode your head.

_Then you know just what will happen if you don't cooperate with us._ She shivered at the mental intrusion. She had to throw up a shield or something! _You're quite a strange little akuma, aren't you? There's something off about you…_

_GET OUT OF MY HEAD!_ She shouted mentally as loud as she could. She hoped it'd burst his mental eardrums. Kumori spared a glance behind her and sighed in frustration when all she could see was tall backsides. Were they following her…?

Turning around, she squeaked as she plowed straight into someone.

"G-gomen ne…" She looked up and gasped.

"That's quite all right. It's my fault, really," the Nea imposter replied, giving her a dazzling, scary smile, his hand latching firmly onto hers as he pulled her into a dark, deserted alleyway. The Noah clutched her closer to his warm, familiar-yet-not chest as she sagged against him in resignation. He'd caught up so _fast_... "Would you care to join us?"

"Wouldn't mind if I do." Kumori flinched as the mind reader came into view, giving her an appraising look before turning to the other.

Kumori gasped as, suddenly, the Nea-look-alike swung her up into his arms, Pichoncho falling from her fingertips to lay looking up at them with his knowing, stiched-on multicolored eyes. "Are you tired, Eliza dear? I'll carry you back to the suite." What was the crazy, sadistic bastard going on about—? Realization dawned on her as she looked around and saw that they'd attracted a little audience of curious humans. They were probably seeing an innocent, petite little angel being harassed by intimidating, devilish older men. They weren't that far off the mark, actually.

"Nothing to see here," Wisely reassured the wary townspeople. "We're just taking my little sister back home." Some of them raised their eyes skeptically at this, taking in Wisely's considerably dark, greyish skin and my pale white pallor.

The tall one rolled his eyes before flashing our crowd another dazzling smile. "We lost my little niece in all the excitement. Isn't that right, Eliza dear?" At this, his grip on her tightened considerably, as if to warn her not to say anything that would go against the cover story.

"Gomene—" she had to think of a name for him! "—Uncle Mikk!" Kumori gave him the stink eye before planting a big, sloppy kiss right on those kissable lips of his, which earned a gasp from the crowd. Pity. She'd wanted it to be a punishment on the Noah.

She giggled in a shrill, girlish voice before turning to beam angelically at the stunned crowd, who'd been expecting a rather different outcome.

"The festival lights were just so pretty, so I went to see them with Nii-san and Uncle Mikk, bu-but I got lost, and, and then I didn't know where everyone was, but, but—" Kumori snuggled in closer to the Noah, faking a few sniffles and tears to chalk it up a bit more. "But then U-Uncle Mikk and Nii-san found me, so I-I'm very, very happy!" The crowd oohed and aahed as "Uncle Mikk" endearingly patted her on the head as "Nii-san" came over and held her hand.

"Children," the Noah said, giving the humans a knowing look. "You can't seem to take your eyes off of them for a second without them running off." He laughed along with the crowd, who were quickly dispersing now that they knew nothing was wrong.

Kumori was only mildly surprised when she tried jumping down out of his arms and found that she couldn't.

"Ah, ah, 'Eliza,' I don't think so. You might still be feeling a little faint." The tall Noah gave her a patronizing smile.

"But 'Uncle Mikk', I _promise_ I won't run off again..."

"That may be, but I'd rather not have you running around and getting _sick_ somehow." He smiled at her, putting more emphasis on the word "sick." Kumori returned the smile with a limp grimace of her own. They both knew what "getting sick" entailed…

She sighed as they carried her "home," her eyes straying back towards the pink rabbit plush lying abandoned in the street…


	4. Typical Abnormalities

**STOP!**

**Sorry, have something to say before yall start… If, when you started reading this story, this chapter (chapter 4!) was already here, you may skip the next few lines of big font and keep reading. If you were one of those people waiting for updates and stuff, well…**

**I changed and rewrote bits and pieces of the first few chapters because I realized I had a few discrepancies that clashed with an event I had planned out for the future, so I had to go back and change what I'd written so that what I'd planned could play out like how I wanted it to. Sorry bout that, but you're gonna hafta read the end of chapter 1 so you'll know what I changed. It's not much, really. Just excludes the "Allen Walker" part, so you'll know what I excluded in chapter 2 (so no needa reread there). Also, this is about a month or so before the events happening in the manga right now, so yeah…**

**Anyways… here's chapter 4! It's short, but yall will understand why I wouldn't want to elaborate once you reach the end of this.**

**If it starts sounding funny halfway through or something, it's cuz I was writing something else that sounded sorta different from this and then I couldn't remember how I was supposed to write this and well, anyways, enjoy. If there's OOCness, well, deeeal with iiit~!**

**Ah yes, disclaimer… I DON'T OWN DGM CHARACTERS, ONLY MY OCs. Do golems count as OCs…? If so, Pichoncho is now MINE~!**

**.**

Typical Abnormalities

Until Kumori had arrived two months ago, Kyoko Kawasaki had never been this annoyed with any one person before.

Kyoko frowned as she made her way swiftly through the streets, looking now for a pink-haired pixie as well as flying townspeople. It'd been little over an hour and a half now since Kumori had disappeared. What had _happened_ to her? If it'd been akuma, they would've made a noticeable disturbance by now, festival or not.

Kyoko's steps slowed as she came across a lump of pink lying forgotten in the entrance of an alleyway. Wasn't that…?

"Pichoncho?" she murmured in astonishment, bending down to get a closer look. Kumori never went anywhere without her fluffy pink accessory…

She was even more surprised when the rabbit plush sat up. "Oh my—!" She rocked back on her heels, the plush toy cocking an ear at her. Kyoko watched curiously as it stood up and turned its back on her and began motioning with one plush arm at its back. She stood there looking at in incomprehensibly for a few seconds before she noticed there was a zipper sewn into its back.

"Am I supposed to…?" The rabbit plush turned to look at her and nodded. "Okay then, here we go…"

She hesitantly unzipped the rabbit plush, revealing a number of items—a big, oversized bag of caramel sweets, several boxes of chocolates, a jar of glazed nuts a worn, faded book of fairy tales, a crumpled pair of black bat wings, a wrinkled Black Order uniform, a set of silverware, a hand-sized mirror, to name a few… No wonder Kumori was so strong, despite her small stature; this thing weighed a ton.

Out of the plush emerged a golem similar to the one given to Allen Walker by General Cross; likewise, this one had a cross emblazoned on its head. Unlike Walker's golem, this was the same outrageous color as Kumori's hair.

How had Kumori received this? The general had already been _dead_ by the time the pink-haired pixie had come to the Order…

Kyoko quickly stood up as the golem flitted around her head.

"What is it?" she snapped irately, concern for her partner making her more irritable than usual. The golem flitted about for a second more before hovering in one spot, projecting a grainy recording for her to see. Kyoko instantly recognized the pink-haired girl in the projection, who seemed to be running from someone. Kyoko was watching the recording closely, so she saw when the despair on the pink-haired exorcist's face morphed from apprehensive fear to content resignation. Kyoko reeled back in shock when the recording showed a close-up of the Noah Tyki Mikk, who began handling and talking to the other girl in a far-too-familiar manner. How did she respond? By **kissing** and _**teasing**_ the man! And Kumori called herself an exorcist! She didn't even offer up any resistance! It was as if she hadn't even _cared_ whether or not she got caught by the Noah…

Kyoko mentally shook her head. She had to give Kumori more credit! It was like the pixie had said—Kyoko needed to give people the benefit of the doubt more often and not be so quick to turn on them. She harrumphed. It was so _hard_, though. She couldn't stand the thought of anyone willing to betray the only loyal family that had she'd ever known.

Her newfound determination to follow through with that goal withered as she watched the rest of the recording and saw Kumori acting _far_ too casually with two Noah—_Noah! Two of them!_—who called her family. _**Family!**_ That's what she and the damn Usagi were supposed to be, not those—those murderous self-proclaimed apostles of **God**!

Anger and jealousy boiled up inside of her as she saw Kumori teasing the other two in turn. With a face like that, Kumori would always be able to attach herself at will to whomever or _whatever_ came calling. Not Kyoko, though. She was stuck with old, grizzled scientists and Finders.

"Come one, Pichoncho!" Kyoko snapped, motioning the golem over. "Which direction did they go?" The pink golem flitted to their left, and Kyoko belligerently followed. She wanted to know—no, _**needed**_ to know—if Kumori was just a spy for the Noah like that damn Allen Walker fellow.

"You know, they say that if you sneeze, someone's thinking about you," Tyki Mikk said, eyeing the pink-haired exorcist as she sneezed again. "They aren't good thoughts, either."

The pixie—she really _did_ look like a pixie, what with her small stature, elfin ears, and amber eyes—responded only by glaring at him, her ears and tail twitching rapidly. She would be quite cute by human standards if you were to take off her scowl.

From his position on the wooden crates adjacent to the duo, Wisely snorted at Tyki's musings, whose eyes narrowed slightly at him. Tyki might suspect him of reading his mind, but no matter. Wisely didn't care all that much if Tyki knew or not. It wouldn't change the fact that he could.

The mind reader returned his attention back to the girl. She looked to be thirteen, maybe fifteen at the most—not old enough to know who or what the 14th had looked like before taking Allen Walker as his host. So how had she recognized Tyki as a near replica of the 14th?

But then, who knows with akuma? The human body stopped aging once it became host to akuma, so for all he knew, the girl was hundreds of years old. Akuma didn't tend to last that long, though. Exorcists were very thorough nuisances.

The girl squirmed under his scrutiny, her amber eyes—like that of a Noah's—darting from his face to Tyki's then away and back again. Wisely couldn't read much from her other than the silly, frilly thoughts she kept purposely bombarding him with, like…

_My tummy's hungry… PICHONCHO! Where are you right now?!_ —what was a "Pichoncho"?—_And why are they so _**PRETTY?** At this thought, a brief image of the visage of the idiot twins Jasdero and Debitto juxtaposed with that of Tyki and Wisely. Wisely bit back a snort. The girl didn't seem to be blind or near-sighted, but that was quickly becoming debatable, since Wisely knew he was nowhere near being as good-looking as Tyki or even the idiot twins.

Wisely slowly exhaled. The girl seemed like an akuma, but unlike the rest of their servants, she wasn't respectfully obedient and deferential, nor did she automatically seek to please her Noah masters. She was like an untrained hunting dog that nipped at the hands of its owners, an unpredictable, yet-to-be-broken horse that would buck without warning.

Very suspicious.

_Tyki. Do you feel this girl's strange presence? _Despite being directly in front of him, Wisely couldn't get a firm grasp of the girl's presence—it was quite faint, fainter than that of a mindless Level 1—nor could he determine what Level akuma she was.

_Define strange_, the other Noah replied.

_Can't you sense it, the Innocence permeating the air?_

Tyki snorted, much to the amusement and confusion of the girl. _There _are_ exorcists running amok in the city looking for the piece of Innocence we've discovered._

_The stench seems to be leaking directly from _her_._

The girl's eyes flicked to the left of them before darting back to the two Noah. She offered them a conciliatory smile, her amber eyes darkening. "Pardon me for my rudeness earlier, Noah-sama. I was merely taken by surprise. To think that you would take such note of me… I'm quite honored." Gone was the lilting, child-like soprano. In its place was an older, more knowing timbre. "For you to have sought me out like that, though… what is it that you wish of me, may I be so bold as to ask?"

Tyki gave her a charming, disarming smile. "Nothing as grand as you're thinking, of course. We were simply curious to know why you ran off before we could properly introduce ourselves."

"We'd also like to know your connection to the Fourteenth," Wisely added, propping his head on his hand upon a crate. Kumori bit back a frantic giggle. The mind reading Noah looked like some haughty prince of a backwater alley kingdom lying on a cheap throne created by the disarray of crates and boxes. His face instantly pinched, as if he'd heard that thought. He probably had.

A titter escaped, and Kumori covered her grin with one hand, her eyes flicking around. They'd taken her to a dead end. The two… fellows—_brutes_ was the word she was looking for, but you had to be careful with a mind reader around—had taken her into some dark, secluded part of town. It was the kind of place where girls like her—well, human girls who _looked_ like her—would never venture to, even with attentive "chaperones" like hers.

"Activate, Dark Heart…" she mouthed into her hand. Her mind and heart racing, Kumori's eye went back to the two Noah as the shadows around them suddenly lengthened and stretched, languidly reaching inky tendrils of darkness towards the trio, two of whom didn't notice the silent intrusion. Just a little more…

Kumori started as the tall Noah's hand clasped onto her wrist, and the shadows silently lurched forward, protectively wrapping themselves around her. "Why so nervous? Are you afraid?" Tyki could feel her pulse beating rapidly through the thin layer of skin.

She glanced around, and her eyes met with those of the mind reader. A strange, slow heat began burning its way up from her tummy, and she swallowed. Was she _that_ hungry? She hadn't eaten much yet, after all, but it felt like something else…

Kumori quickly turned her attention back to the fake Nea, looking up into his mouthwatering, chocolaty brown eyes, which were probing her for answers she wasn't quite ready to give.

The pixie returned the Noah's intrusive glance with one of her own, tilting her head up closer to the handsome Noah's—which was no small feat, since she barely reached his chest—and wrapped her arms around his neck. Wisely nearly keeled over from his seat on throne of grubby boxes at Kumori's flirtatious, forward behavior.

"Do I have need to be?" Kumori responded in a throaty purr. Kumori didn't know how normal akuma would act around Noah, but she knew this sure as hell wasn't it. Now was as good a time as any to blow her cover, if Wisely hadn't already.

"You're no ordinary akuma, are you?" The Noah laughed, wrapping his arms around her slim waist. Kumori shivered as her waist grew suddenly, steadily warmer. What was _with_ him? Why was he making her body act so _weird? _Was it because he looked like _him_? Nea hadn't made her stomach feel fluttery and warm like this, though…

"You're right," she replied, licking her lips. "Do you want to know a secret?" she whispered seductively into his ear. He raised an eyebrow, and she gave him a devilish smile before replying.

"I'm not an akuma," she whispered, the shadows surrounding them suddenly engulfing her, effectively separating her from the two astonished Noah.

"Sayonara~!" she piped up, reverting once again to her childish, innocent persona.

**OvO**

"Innocence, activate!"

Kyoko skidded to a stop as she heard the faint echo of the standard lines of an attacking exorcist. Could that be Kumori's voice…? It sounded slightly deeper and more masculine, though…

Pichoncho, who'd climbed back into the pink rabbit plush, flapped its ears once, twice, before taking off into the air. Kyoko and a couple of the passing townspeople gaped at the flying plush toy. Kumori must've cut off the original rabbit ears to make room for the golem's wings.

"Slow down!" she snapped, struggling to keep up. How could it still move so _fast_ while carrying all the things in Kumori's make-shift bag? Maybe she needed to work out more…

She fell to the cobblestones as an explosion rocked the town, and her breath hitched as she noticed a plume of smoke appear in the sky not too far from her current position. What kind of trouble had she gotten herself _into?_

**OwO**

_What kind of entertaining trouble have I gotten myself _into? Kumori asked herself as she pirouetted and dodged another attack from the hideous Level 2 following her. Clutching the shadows closer to her—it would stop that damn mind reader from reading her thoughts—she ducked into another alley way, running back towards the water fountain. There'd be _much_ more room to maneuver, especially since the townspeople were running back to their homes in fear due to the sudden appearance of monsters. Also, there was something about that water fountain…

"Go awaaay!" Kumori cried out in a petulant voice at the corpulent monster following her. It looked like a humongous rainbow fish mixed with a yummy roll of sushi. Kumori's mouth started watering. What would it taste like, she wondered…?

"Come back here, exorcist!" Kumori licked her lips. She was _sooo_ hungry… Maybe just one little nibble?

"If you don't leave me alone, you're going to regret it~!" she trilled, giving it one last warning as she bit her lip, drawing blood.

"Stop!"

"If you say so…" She suddenly stopped and wiped one hand across her bleeding lips, and the akuma, due to its momentum, flipped head over fin and crashed to the street several feet in front of her.

"Cardinal Castigation!" Before it could regain its sense, Kumori created several blades from the blood on her hands and promptly skewered her prey to the cobblestones. Another crimson blade materialized in one hand.

"I warned you…" Kumori sighed, licking the edge of the tip of the congealed blood before laying it near the eye of the fish monster. "But you wouldn't listen, would you?"

She smiled as the akuma flopped feebly about as it tried to get away. It couldn't, of course. Kumori had made sure of that by skewering its midsection, its fins, and its tail.

"But then, I'd still be hungry if you had."

"W-What are you doing?!" it ground out in a grating, metallic screech as the ethereal blade elongated and sharpened, lowering dangerously, perilously close. The akuma exhaled in relief when the shadowy blade in Kumori's hand dissipated.

"Isn't it obvious?" Kumori replied, grinning wickedly at the trapped, helpless akuma. "I'm going to eat you."


	5. Beansprout for Dinner

**Yellos, chapter 5 here.**

**Kumo-chan's secret should be obvious now, and… DUUUDE, didn't realize, but I might be unknowingly jocking other people's ideas?! Was reading "The Caretaker" (E-Richie, guys!) and heard that SpiderWraith has a little hybrid of her (?) own by the name of Liza Akuma! Hahah, and here I was feeling all special, heheh! I'm gonna go read SpiderWraith's story now, she's piqued my interest! Also "Shadow of Madness," also thanks to E-Richie's references~!**

**Oh, sorry if people (like Tyki and Wisely and Jasdebi and… EVERYONE ELSE?!) come off waaay OOC, like I replaced them with psychotic look-alikes! It's cuz I only started reading the manga again recently after a long pause of 2 years, so I'm rewatching the anime again to familiarize myself again with their personalities and stuff… SORRY! Anyways, enjoy!**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**O.O**

Beansprout for Dinner

The Noah came upon her just as she was finishing up with her meal.

"Ah, it's you guys!" the girl gaped, wiping away the last bits of akuma flesh off her face, or what Tyki could see of it, since she was wearing some sort of thin black veil. "I was getting pretty hungry there, so thanks for the meal!"

"What, no more polite, refined social intercourse?" the Nea look-alike asked, sidestepping a lump of flesh Kumori aimed at him.

"Nope!" she trilled, kicking another stray slab of meat at the tall Noah. It was very disconcerting and bothersome, that someone like **him** would wear _his_ face. "Nea-sama always tried getting me to talk like that, but it's sooo stiff and proper and _boring!_"

"We never even got to properly introduce ourselves, though."

Kumori pouted before huffing at him. "Fine, fine! Let's talk proper and introduce ourselves, then. I'm leaving after."

Without looking, she pointed an imperious finger at the shorter of the two. "I already know who _you_ are, so stop trying to hack into my head with your powers—it won't work. All _you_ have to do," she piped, smiling at the taller of the two, "is say your name."

He grinned and gave her a mocking bow. "Tyki Mikk, the Noah of Pleasure, at your service."

Kumori cocked an eyebrow at him and curtsied before responding in that mature voice of hers. "Kumori, exorcist of the Black Order, pleased to have made your acquaintance, Lord Tyki, Lord Wisely."

"No first name?" Tyki inquired, tilting his head.

"It's a _secret_," she whispered conspiratorially, relapsing once again to her childish lilt.

The Noah of Pleasure smiled. "Maybe you'll tell me, once we become better acquainted."

She tittered. He seemed so _sure_ of that, as if it were inevitable. "Sure thing!"

"Is that a promise, then?"

"Okay, I promise to tell you my secret once we become _clooose_ friends." Kumori smiled and gave him another curtsy—this one being of a more sardonic nature—before turning away.

"Where do you think you're going?" Wisely sharply spoke. "We're not done talking with you yet."

Kumori frowned at them. "I thought you guys said I could leave after I introduced myself?"

"We never said we'd let you go," Tyki corrected. "You just assumed."

"You two are mean," Kumori pouted. "Not like Jas and Debi and aaall."

"I'll take that as a compliment, seeing as those two aren't the brightest."

Bending forward so her torso was parallel with the ground, Kumori stuck her tongue out at them like a little imp. "I'm leaving, mean Nea look-alike and Mind Peeper. You guys can play on your own."

Tyki's almost friendly smile dimmed at the reference to the 14th, and Wisely, who didn't take to the girl's nickname for him, snapped his fingers. Kumori looked around as Level 1akuma started appearing around her.

Literally bursting with excitement, she beamed at them. "More snacks for me? That's so sweet of you guys! I'll take back what I said about you two!" Giggling in wicked delight, she burst into the air to avoid the missiles launched by the Level 1, jumping from one to the other, snickering as they mindlessly, indifferently destroyed one another in a fruitless effort to kill her.

Wisely and Tyki watched in grim fascination as the pink-haired exorcist eluded their servants, analyzing the events of the battle while simultaneously carrying on a mental conversation about her.

_Do you think she could be a 3__rd__ generation exorcist?_ Tyki asked the mind reader.

_We harvested them from all the Branches of the Order already,_ Wisely replied to Tyki's mental question.

_Maybe we missed her. How else would she be able to handle Innocence as well as the akuma gene?_

_Even then, the akuma genes within her would rebel against the Innocence. She wouldn't even be _alive_ if she were an accommodator. The combination of akuma gene and Innocence would literally rip her body to shreds. Still, that doesn't explain how she's managing to evade my mental intrusions._

Tyki started at this revelation. _The Earl will have to hear of this. Could it be some new device of the Order?_

_Possibly, but the chances of that are slim. If they were able to create devices that could deflect the abilities of the Noah, they would've already done something about your and Road's abilities. _Wisely's brow furrowed. _Also, I could still read her, before. It wasn't until she escaped and activated her Innocence that I started having trouble._

Wisely sputtered as another lump of smoldering flesh flew past Tyki and nearly blasted him in the head, nearly dealing him what would've been a fatal blow, had he been human still.

He watched in morbid fascination as the girl began singing.

"Rain of love, love of rain

Bloody rain, a lovely stain

Nothing but a stitch of pain!"

At the last note, she gave them a cheeky, impish grin, the last of the Level 1s falling to the earth in a blaze of bloody gore. "Is that all the toys you're going to give me?"

"That's all we have at the moment. If you stay with us a tad longer, maybe we'll have some more."

"Ah, that's tempting," she murmured, biting her lips before heaving a longsuffering sigh. "But I have to meet up with someone. We were looking for something, and…"

Tyki gave her a knowing look. "Is it the Innocence in this town? If so, we have it already." Hopefully, the twins had managed to find it already.

"Eh, really?" Kumori asked, raising an eyebrow and puffing up her cheeks. "Then what's this?" she replied, reaching into a slit in her black dress. Tyki and Wisely started in surprise as she withdrew the shard of Innocence.

_Tyki, I thought you had that in your pocket._

_As did I._

"Tyki-pooon~!" He visibly cringed at the nickname. What were the chances that she'd give him the same hated nickname as the Earl's? "Thanks for giving me the snacks and Innocence! I'm leaving now," she cheekily giggled, waving the Innocence at them. "Ah, wait!" she added as an afterthought. "Tell Debi-sama and Dero-sama their little kitty misses them, please?" She gave them a mischievous grin. "Ja, ne~!"

"Stop." Wisely verbally commanded. Kumori involuntarily paused in the midst of turning away from them. "Hand over the Innocence, girl."

"D-Don't wanna…"

"It's not a matter of whether or not you _want_ to, _Exorcist_," Wisely stated, giving her a small, knowing smile. "The akuma genes within you will not allow you to disobey a direct order from a Noah."

"I-Is that so…?" she muttered, taking slow, faltering steps closer and closer, the Innocence held precariously in one hand out towards them.

"Quite right," Tyki added, giving her a conciliatory smile. He extended his hand, reaching for hers. "Now, if you would be so kind as to give me that Innocence, Kumo-chan?"

"Ah, well, since we're just barely getting to know each other, Tyki-pon, I'll tell you a little something about myself." She swung the Innocence out of Tyki's reach and gave them a big grin, the shadows trailing after her expanding and surging forward. "I'm not your typical exorcist."

The two Noah gaped as the shadows surged forward and engulfed her once again. Swearing, Tyki rushed forward, but his hands grasped only tendrils of filmy darkness as the akuma exorcist flitted away with their piece of the Innocence.

"Shit."

_You can say that again._

**wO**

The pounding of her feet on the cobblestones muffled by shadows, Kumori hugged the piece of Innocence closer to her chest and giggled as she darted through the streets, the setting sun casting a pale, deliciously bloody glow to the dark store fronts. The expressions on their faces! And to think they'd been nice enough to give her food and Innocence… Now she'd have an extra piece to hand over to Komui-san once she found the piece she and Kyoko had been assigned.

"Almost there," she muttered in a little sing-song voice as she neared the central square. Hopefully the shadows would stop Tyki and Wisely from being able to follow her, if only for a bit…

She breathed out a sigh of relief as she charged into the empty town square and gasped when she suddenly found herself weightless, floating several feet off the cobblestones.

"This is fuuun~!" she breathlessly giggled, waving her arms about to propel herself forward. She grinned as she floated higher and higher. If only Kyoko were here…

Kumori paused in her flapping when she remembered her partner. Where were Kyoko and that delicious Finder? It was about four hours ago—the clock on the tower read nearly five o'clock—that they'd been separated by the incessant press of the crowd, but for her, it'd seemed like an hour or so at the most.

Madly flailing her arms about like a frog, Kumori made her way closer and closer to the top of the fountain. Already, she could make out a faint green glow tinting the water. It would've been easy to mistake the glow as the light rebounding off the surface of the water fountain itself, which was a pale green in color. If Kumori hadn't jumped through the water fountain that morning and experienced its apparent lack of gravity, she wouldn't even have noticed.

"Almost there…" she murmured, landing uncertainly at the edge of the uppermost ring of the water fountain, the water sloshing at her legs almost tipping her over and back into the air.

"Ah, careful there, Kumori. We wouldn't want you falling from there, would we, Wisely?"

Kumori looked over her shoulder to find Wisely and Tyki looking up at her from more than fifteen feet below.

"That's fine. The levitation's working still, so even if I fall—"

"That's where you're wrong," Wisely called out.

"You don't believe us?" Tyki asked, cocking an eyebrow at her skeptical look. "You can test it out if you want."

She frowned at them and then took off one of her pumps, which was sopping wet. Halfheartedly, she lobbed it at them and watched in surprise as Tyki caught it in one hand. They were right; the field had dropped, allowing gravity to take hold once again. She shivered slightly as she recalled just how close she'd been to falling, a moment ago…

"The gentlemanly thing for you to do is offer me assistance~!" Kumori called down, lifting the hem of her dress indecently high and wringing rivulets of water from the heavily-soaked lace and silk.

Tyki unhurriedly lit up a cigar. "Well, we aren't your typical gentlemen, now are we?"

"Don't expect any help from me then! Meanie," Kumori mumbled, sticking her tongue out at him. She turned her attention back towards the fountain and effortlessly, single-handedly ripped off the tip of the fountain, causing a bigger burst of water to gush forth from the tubing. She sighed as she found herself drenched in even more water, and, shaking off bits of debris, Kumori quickly extracted the glimmering piece of Innocence from the dull stone work.

"And that makes two," she muttered to herself, bringing the two pieces of Innocence together, their glow mingling and brightening for a moment before dulling down as she let them fall through her fingers and into the shadows, which swiftly, eagerly swallowed them up. Crouching down and hiding behind the fountain head, she held her knees in her arms and slowly bit her lip.

"Now what…?" she growled, mashing her head with her wet, clammy hands. How was she going to get _down_ from here?

**OvQ**

"Shit!" Kyoko muttered. She never indulged in vulgar language or behavior, but today was reason enough to break that habit. First, she'd lost both her partner Kumori _and_ the Finder assisting them, and then she'd foolishly involved herself in a duel with between Noah.

"Are you alright?" the white-haired former exorcist called out, his enormous golden blade slicing through the cobblestones as if it were butter as Debitto, the dark Noah, dodged another one of his attacks.

"I'll live," she replied, wiping the blood running down the side of her head with her left hand, which wasn't holding a gun. Good thing the bullet had only grazed her, else her brains would be splattered across the pavement. Kyoko cursed as something slammed into her from her blind side.

"You should pay more attention, hii!" she looked up into the smiling, heavily rouged face of the other Noah, a blond boy by the name of Jasdero.

"I wouldn't be bragging if I were you!" Kyoko snapped, shooting off several rounds and shooting to her feet when the Noah retreated to dodge her shots.

"Allen! Get over here!" she shouted, bowling the Noah over into a trash bin, dumping an empty waste basket on his head for good measure. Hit with sudden inspiration, she knocked him over onto his side and rolled him down the alley way incline. She snorted in satisfaction when the Noah began throwing curses at her as he rolled farther and farther downhill.

"We're leaving!" A barrage of stray bullets emphasized her words, and she quickly ran down the street closer to the other sparring pair and touched her hand to the window of some random cobbler's shop. "Activate, Looking Glass!" The store front window began glowing faintly, a pale green luminance. "Ah, Pichoncho, come over here!" In all the turmoil, she'd totally forgotten about the pink rabbit plush. Kyoko quickly jammed her gun into one of the various pockets of her red and black Order uniform and grabbed onto the plush toy.

She turned back towards the fighting duo. "Hurry, Walker, else I'm going to leave without you!" Allen Walker wasn't really her responsibility—he was second to the retrieval of Innocence. Hopefully, Kumori had already managed to find it.

She gave the white-haired boy a slight frown when he finally bounded over after having dealt the Noah a blow that had left him winded and stunned, kneeling on the ground on all fours.

"You took your time, I see."

"Hey, it was—"

"No time for your whining, now shut up and grab on. Don't let go," she added. He obligingly latched onto her, and Kyoko took a step forward, through the portal and into a stark, blindingly white hall.

"Where are we?" the white-haired boy asked, looking around in curiosity.

"I call this place the Glass Sanctuary," the girl replied, taking off her glasses and wiping away specks of blood. She frowned when she found that some of the mess had dried and wouldn't come off.

Allen started when he turned around and saw an entryway—the same height and length as the window they'd just passed through—that displayed the scene they'd just escaped. He brandished his sword as he saw Debitto running towards them.

"Don't worry, he can't see us." He turned and looked inquiringly at the girl, whose name he still didn't know.

"How do you know that, and who are you?"

"My name is Kyoko Kawasaki, and I'm from the same Branch of the Order that you abandoned. My Innocence—Looking Glass—allows me to move both myself and anyone—or thing, in Pichoncho's case—of my choosing that's in direct contact with me freely through mirrors and other reflective surfaces. The portal I create then becomes a looking glass that allows me to see out from the vantage point of the entryway. No one can see in, though," she added, watching in grim amusement when Debitto walked right up to the window and began tapping on it. She turned and walked away, and Allen jogged to catch up with her.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm looking for someone," she muttered, quickening her pace, looking around for another portal from Fierre. Where was it…?

"Here we are…" she murmured, splaying her hand against a five-by-five window that looked down into an alley way that led to the town square. He eyes widened as she took in an odd green glow at the end of the alley way. Wasn't that… "Innocence?"

"Allen, come over—" She frowned when she saw Allen inching towards a different entryway, one which led to a seaside port in Ireland.

"Stop daydreaming and pay attention!" she snapped, extending her left hand to him as her right grabbed onto the black rabbit golem. "I'm the only one who can pass freely through the portals, so if you're planning on running off somewhere, forget about it."

He heaved an exasperated sigh before reluctantly taking hold of her hand. Kyoko gave him one last displeased glare before taking the three of them through the portal and back to Fierre. Her brisk walk turned into a sprint when she saw a pink blob at the top of the water fountain in the square, which was the source of the glow. It was also the source of the water flooding the town square.

Had Kumori broken the fountain? If so, they'd have to pay a quite a fee for the repairs... As if Komui-sans antics weren't bad enough, Kumori had to go and add to the bill.

Kyoko burst out of the alley way and cried out the other girl's name just before she was promptly caught by a pair of grey hands.

**OwO**

"Kumori-chan!" Kumori's eyes snapped open when she heard a familiar voice call out her name. She quickly reevaluated her need to get down when the sounds of battle suddenly assailed her ears. What was going on down there?

Kumori looked over the rim of the water fountain and groaned when she saw the situation below. Wisely had Kyoko pinned from behind, and Tyki was making quick work of a slim figure clad in silvery white.

"Get down here and hand over the Innocence. If you don't…" Wisely warned, furrowing his brow in concentration.

"Kumori, don't—!" She choked as Wisely tightened his hold around her neck.

"Wait, wait!" Kumori called down, glowering. "No need to blast brains or do anything else! I-I'm getting down, just wait a sec!"

Just _how_ was she going to get _down_ from here, though?

"Ah, I forgot! The sushi monster! What was _yours_…?" She closed her eyes and looked within herself, searching, searching, _searching_…

"Found you," she sighed. "Activate, Cerise Liquescence…"

Kyoko gasped as Kumori made her way down the twenty foot drop on a limb of pink, blood-tinged water, which crashed listlessly against the cobblestones and created minor tidal waves once the pixie abandoned it.

Kumori involuntarily flinched when the Noah reached an impatient hand out towards her. "Give me the Innocence, girl."

"I have a name, you know…" Sighing, she closed her eyes and willed her Dark Heart to offer up its few precious treasures. "Come on, now, before people's heads start popping like cherries…" The shadows around her billowed up from the stone street, and, almost unwillingly, a small bubble of darkness slowly separated itself from the shadowy, undulating mass, parting itself to reveal two shards of Innocence.

Reluctantly, Kumori plucked up the Innocence, the shadows seeping away from them as she did. She held it out to the Noah, who callously cast Kyoko aside like one would any tool that had outrun its usefulness.

"Kyoko—!" Kumori gasped as, suddenly, she found herself several inches off the ground in the firm grip of the Mind Peeper.

_Don't call me that!_ Wisely frowned before starting when he realized he could hear her thoughts again.

_Why? That's exactly what you are,_ **hentai**!

Wisely scowled before turning his attention back to the other exorcist, who was still sprawled on the cobbles, motionless and unconscious, which must be why her mind was blank to him at the moment.

"Now that you've outrun your uses…" He theatrically extended one arm out towards the black-haired exorcist and glowered when her brains didn't plaster the cobbles red like he'd wanted. His eyes tightened when he saw what he'd thought to be strands of the girl's black hair twitched and convulsed. He turned back to the pixie in his hands, who was giggling breathlessly while struggling for air.

"What did you _do?_" he probed, constricting her neck even further. To be foiled not once but _twice_ by this mere exorcist child and her shadows…

His frown deepened when Kumori defiantly looked him in the eye and stuck her tongue out at him. "N-Not telling, M-Mind Peeper…" Kumori wriggled as the warm feeling in her stomach intensified with Wisely's intense look. What _was_ it, this strange warmth?

She giggled again as Wisely's brows furrowed. "Y-You can't p-pop my brains, c-cuz E-Earl-sama w-would be real d-disappointed not t-to see me, a-after all this time, ya know…"

He closed his eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh. The girl was right. "Come on, Tyki," he snapped, turning to the other Noah, who was taking his time beating up the Fourteenth's host. "We have what we came for, and a little something more." _If we want to get back to the mansion in time, we're going to have to leave now to look for Jasdebi._

"Alright, just a tad longer," Tyki replied, sending the white-haired former exorcist careening into a shop through the front window. He dusted off his hands and turned around, giving Kumori a small smile when he saw her hanging from Wisely's hand. "See, Kumori? It would've been much easier for you to have just come with us in the first place. We wouldn't have had to chase after you like this and harm your friends… Wisely, maybe you could let her down. I don't think she can breathe."

"Ah, I forgot." He let the girl drop from his hands, and she fell to the cobblestones in a breathless heap, gulping in big puffs of air, her hands clasped to her neck.

"Promise not to run off again?"

The girl licked her lips before hesitantly conceding. "H-Hai, Tyki-sama…"

**x**

Kyoko awoke, groggy and sore, when she felt sharp teeth biting into her arm.

"Pichoncho… what are you—?" Her mind cleared when she looked up and saw Kumori lying like a cowed dog at the feet of the two Noah. The bile in her throat rose when she saw the taller of the two Noah help Kumori to her feet, his hands clasped firmly yet gently on forearms.

"Good," he said, replying to something one of the others had said. "Then—"

"You're not taking her anywhere, Tyki!" Said Noah turned, and in a blur, a white, silvery-clad figure jumped out at him from the wreckage of a broken store, his blade, gleaming wickedly in the dark night, brandished high, eager and ready to deliver judgment.

In the flicker of a second, before either of the others could react, the pixie thrust the Noah aside, taking the full brunt of the force of the gold blade.

"Kumori!" Kyoko cried, biting back the words when she realized she was being foolish. The blade was Innocence, after all, so Kumori wouldn't be affected—

Kyoko was beyond shocked when her fellow exorcist let loose a high, plaintive scream of pain.


	6. Secrets Revealed

**Chapter 6 here.**

**Hmmm… Thinking about shortening the chapters. Should I…? (and… I did, upon going back, heh… this is a sidenote from the future, just so you know).**

**Anyways, enjoy? Might be BORING, heheh, since it's mainly just people talking/shouting, heheh...**

**Disclaimer: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs.**

**O.O**

Secrets Revealed

"W-Why…?" the white-haired boy gaped, staring into the amber eyes of the felled girl. The blade slid out of her body with a sickening splat, and Kumori slumped to the floor, clutching at the throbbing wound in her chest, which was, needless to say, bleeding profusely.

Kyoko was sprawled out, hyperventilating, where the Noah had dropped her, looking at the scene with stricken, horror-filled eyes, which was pretty much the same expression on the white-haired boy's face.

A foreign thought slid unbidden into her mind. _Why'd you save him?_

"Well, this was fun, but we'll be taking our leave, now." Tyki turned and rushed off into the gloom. With one last lingering glance at Kumori, Wisely followed suit. Allen quickly sprung to his feet but hesitated when the wounded girl let out a small, pitiful whimper, her fellow exorcist making no move to help. Swearing, he dropped to his feet, watching as, off in the distance, the two Noah disappeared into an arc gate.

Allen reached out to staunch her wound. "D-Don't touch me!" she shrieked, jerking away from him. "I-I'll be fine in a bit, just… l-leave me alone." Kumori's eyes flicked over to her friend and she flinched, recoiling from the look of anger and fear in the other exorcist's eyes.

"W-What are you?" Kyoko gaped, feebly trying to crawl farther away. "Y-You're not… you're not_ human._"

For a moment, a glimmer of a heartbeat, Allen registered hurt and betrayal in the pink-haired girl's amber eyes before it was swiftly hidden behind an overly-cheerful mask of indifference.

"Hai, hai! I'm not _entirely_ human," she admitted, giving the two a smile before muttering something that sounded a lot to Allen like "Vermillion Abandon".

The white-haired boy gaped as the petite, pink-haired girl stood up smoothly, as if the wound to her torso no longer affected her. It didn't, of course; Vermillion Abandonment allowed Kumori to remove herself from the pain her body was undergoing for a couple of hours, although her body still underwent stress. Allen and Kyoko didn't know that, though. All they knew was that she'd just shrugged off what would've been a fatal wound for a person of her stature.

"H-How did you…?"

"It's a secret," Kumori uttered for the second time that night but without the enthusiasm of the first, giving the duo a less-than-halfhearted smile. "I won't tell either of you though, because we aren't friends."

Kyoko looked troubled by this but didn't contradict what the other had said.

"My eye didn't see it, but you… you feel like an _akuma_."

Kumori derisively sniffed. "I'm not an akuma! This is _my_ body—no disgusting mechanical skeleton crawled into my mouth."

"I-I'll be going, then," Allen Walker muttered awkwardly, casting one last confused look at Kumori. "I'm sorry about that," he added, motioning to her chest wound.

"I don't want y-your apology," she mumbled, hands clutching the ripped fabric of her dress closer to her chest. "I just want you to _leave_."

"Well then…" he inclined his head. "Goodbye."

Kumori watched as the silvery-white figure made off into the gloom, a beacon of hope quickly engulfed by the oncoming darkness. She sighed and turned around, laughing grimly as the white-haired boy's golem almost bumped into her head in its haste to follow its master.

"Come on, let's go back to the Order," Kumori suggested unenthusiastically, waving her golem plush toy over.

"W-Wait!" She turned to look at the other exorcist. "The Finder! What about—?"

Kumori gave her a reassuring smile. "Ah, don't worry!" Kyoko visibly relaxed. "I ate him."

**OxO**

The two exorcists rushed back to the Order through Kyoko's mirrors—once she'd created a portal, it remained in the Glass Sanctuary unless she destroyed it; she had several leading back to the Order, one of which was in Komui's very office—and the awkward silence while walking through the blindingly white walls of the Sanctuary was so heavy and tense that it could've been sliced and diced into a platter of dense, unappealing munchies that even Allen Walker would've shied away from. Likewise, their reception at the Order was a dull, apprehensive affair. They immediately reported back to Komui, and Kumori was quickly coming to regret that decision.

The two girls stood in front of Komui Lee and Malcolm C. Leverrier, who was giving the shorter of the two a hard stare.

"Let me get this straight, then," the mustachioed man snapped, his eye twitching slightly when noticing Kumori's lack of attention. "Not only did you fail to obtain the Innocence—of which there was two, might I add—on your first mission since arriving at the Order but you _personally_ handed it to the enemy and saved said Noah from an exorcism by Allen Walker, whom you were so kind as to allow to escape after the entire ordeal. Am I correct in this deduction?"

"You missed the part where I ate the akuma Finder," Kumori indifferently replied in her childish lilt, absentmindedly playing with the ends of the lace ribbons on her ripped bodice as she stared off into space. Already, she could feel the false, cheery bravado she'd adopted back in Fierre seeping away from her, along with the effects of Vermillion Abandon. A dull, faint ache made itself known in her chest at the same instant a tingle of unease went up her spine as Leverrier gave the pair of them appraising looks, distaste twisting his stern features when he inevitably found something he didn't like.

"Have you anything to add to this, Kyoko Kawasaki?" The words whipped out at Kyoko, who stiffened a little before replying.

"N-No, Leverrier-san, although I-I've noticed that Kumori isn't, isn't—"

"Human?" Komui finished. Kyoko mutely nodded. "Since you know part of it already, we might as well tell you the rest, right, Leverrier?" Said man nodded in stiff agreement, and Komui gave Kyoko a cautioning glance.

"This is a secret that only a few in the Order know of, Kyoko," Komui said, leaning his chin on his propped hands. "You must swear to never allow this secret to pass from your lips to the ears of others, else we'll have another situation similar to the Walker incident on our hands." Kyoko nodded her head again, and Komui's eyes flicked over to Kumori before continuing.

"You're right, Kyoko. Kumori isn't a _normal_ human but a hybrid of human and akuma." Kumori's lips tipped upwards into a small smile as Kyoko stiffened even further, if that were at all possible.

"I-I don't quite follow, Komui-san… do you mean to say that she is like Madarao and the other 3rd generation exorcists?"

"No, Kumori would be more of a 4th generation, if it were possible for another like her to be created, or if Central were to allow such individuals like her to propagate."

Kyoko's eyebrows drew up in confusion before comprehension slowly dawned on her. "Y-You don't mean to say that she, she's—?"

"Yes," Leverrier interrupted, turning an unpleasant eye on Kumori as if she were even less than the scum coating the soles of his boots. She probably was. "That abomination there is the result of the communion of human and akuma."

"H-How… how is that even _possible?_" Kyoko gaped, turning to look at Kumori with wide-eyed revulsion.

The ache in Kumori's chest slowly, steadily grew.

"You needn't know the more intimate details," Leverrier stated, turning to give Kyoko a significant look. "All that you need to know is that 'Kumori,' as it likes to call itself, is a dangerous being that is more akuma than human in nature. It can't be trusted, as its earlier actions show—it can't resist the demands of Noah."

Komui's face tightened at Leverrier's dehumanizing of her, but Kumori merely smiled at him to show that she was fine with it. The mustache man was right, after all.

Kyoko frowned. "When you say more akuma than human in nature…"

"Kumori experiences hunger pangs similar to those felt by akuma, which is why she has an immense appetite and can't help herself when she gets hungry," Komui-san explained. "Likewise, she's able to absorb other akuma and obtain their abilities."

"Shouldn't the akuma genes have consumed the human part by now?"

"Yes, that's true. It seems her Innocence is protecting her body and preventing the akuma genes from destroying her more human bits."

"So she really _is_ an accommodator?"

"Yes, although we don't know how, since her Innocence isn't embedded in any part of her body. Which is a good thing, because it would've agitated the akuma genes further if it had been, and she probably wouldn't have survived the trial."

Kumori childishly raised her hand, interrupting Kyoko as she was about to ask another question. "Ne, Komui-san, can I leave now?" Leverrier's face tightened at her lackadaisical disregard for authority, but Komui gave her a weary, affectionate smile.

"Right, you two still need to clean up. Yes, you can go, Kumori. You too, Kyoko."

"But, Komui-san—"

"We still have important matters that need to be discussed, girl."

"Y-Yes, Leverrier-san. Forgive me." Kyoko bowed before turning to leave. Ignoring the mustachioed man, Kumori waved goodbye to Komui. Just as she was about to walk through the door, Kumori was stopped by Leverrier.

"Do not think that this will not affect the way in which you go about the Order, _Kumori_. If anything else should occur that would bring your image further into doubt, consider this your first and _last_ mission."

**TxT**

"Ne, Kyoko-chan—" The black-haired exorcist ignored her and kept walking. "Kyoko-chan, wait, I'm—"

"Sorry?" the other girl filled in, turning to glare at her. "You _lied_ to us, Kumori!"

"I-I didn't _lie_, I just never said—"

"But you let us _think_ that you were—!" she paused and looked around to see if anyone was nearby. "—_human!_" she hissed. "You never told us otherwise, which is the same as lying to us!"

"That's because I-I—" Kumori struggled to keep up with the taller girl as she briskly walked away. She'd have grabbed onto Kyoko's arm to slow her down, but there were still traces of blood—akuma blood oil—on her hands, and it might harm Kyoko if she weren't careful.

"Kyoko, wait!" she cried out, forcing the other girl to stop, since they'd entered a populated part of the Order. "I-I thought we were friends, so why won't you…?"

The other girl turned to give her a sardonic smile. "Guess you _are_ sort of human, Kumori, since that's what humans do. We _lie._" Kumori flinched, the throbbing in her chest intensifying, and the other girl smiled, deriving petty joy from her pain.

A Finder came over. "Kyoko, what happened?" She turned away and shrugged his hand off her shoulder.

"Are you two alright? Where are you hurt?"

Kumori gave the Finders and staff a stiff, tired smile as they crowded around her, a smile which withered as the black-haired exorcist quietly slipped away, leaving the pink pixie to fend off the overly-concerned Order members on her own.

"I'm fine, really. I-I just need to go clean up…" _And eat,_ she added silently to herself as she felt the hunger in her belly churning and contracting.

One of them stepped closer, raising one hand and pointing to her arms. "I-Is that blood—?"

"I-I'll be fine, really, just—just leave me alone!" The crowd immediately stepped back as dark tendrils burst forth seemingly out of nowhere and wrapped themselves around Kumori, creating a thin sphere of darkness that effectively separated her from the others. They all eagerly rushed out of her way when a Finder, who hadn't been fast enough, was repelled by the field of shadows and thrown forcefully into a pillar.

Kumori ran headlong into crowd, so eager to escape from the teeming hall into the dark, empty corridors that she didn't bother apologizing as others were sent flying by her force field.

The pounding of her feet was accompanied by the sound of flapping wings, Pichoncho flying slowly alongside her. The shadows slowly dissipated as she neared her room. Her steps quickened when she heard faltering footsteps behind her, but they skidded to a stop when she heard a familiar voice call out to her.

"Kumo-chan!" Kumori hesitantly turned around to see Lavi jogging towards her. "I heard you got back just now, and—what happened?" he asked, finally noticing the blood staining her hands. He blushed and averted his eyes when he saw that the bodice of her dress was torn, revealing bits of Kumori that Lavi was far too happy to see. His eyes fell on Pichoncho, and he gaped as he saw Kumori's rabbit plush loafing around seemingly by itself. How…?

Lavi mentally shook his head. "Y-You need to get to the infirmary!" he said, reaching one hand out grab her arm.

"D-Don't—!" He flinched when she recoiled from him. "Don't _touch_ me, Lavi." He started when she called him by his name. She only ever called him Usa or Usagi, never…

"Kumori, what's wrong?" he asked gently, holding his arms out away from his body to show that he meant no harm. Still, Kumori skittered away from him like a cornered, frightened animal. Lavi's heart convulsed when he saw the pain and distress shining in her eyes, as bright and clear as they'd been on _that_ day.

"Kumori…" Her hunger surged at the look of tender vulnerability on the redhead's face, and, with a small shake of her head, Kumori bolted. Swearing, Lavi ran after her. "Kumori, wait up!"

She felt the edges of his fingers grasping at locks of her hair, and, fearful that the akuma blood oil plastered over her might harm him, Kumori called out for help.

"Pichoncho!" Understanding immediately, the enormous golem plush toy flew low and tangled itself up in Lavi's feet, causing him to stumble. The pink rabbit plush speedily righted itself and continued after Kumori, and after a few seconds of dazed confusion, so did Lavi.

As Pichoncho plopped onto her head, Kumori sighed in relief. Her room was in sight! Rushing forward, she hastily unlocked the door and slipped inside, slamming it shut just as something crashed into it on the other side. She slid down, sitting in front of the door as it was rocked by Lavi's pounding, incessant fists.

"Kumori! Open up!"

Her breathes coming out in rapid, gasping pants, she ignored his pleas, clasping her blood-encrusted hands firmly over her ears to block out the sounds of her red-haired friend's confused, anguished cries.

"Go away."

"No. Kumori—"

"Go _away_!" Kumori shrieked, shutting her eyes tight as warm, salty tears spilled down from them onto her cheeks and knees. "Why won't you leave me _alone?!_"

"Because we're _friends!_"

"We're not _**friends**_!" she retorted, fervently shaking her head to and fro. "We were _never_ friends! Not you, not me, not Kyoko! _No one!_"

"Just tell me what's wrong—"

"No!" Why were people so keen on finding out her _secrets?_ "I'm not telling, so stop asking!" she screeched, her voice going up another octave. "I _**hate**_ you, stupid Lavi, you know that? I've _always_ hated you, ever since that first day, so why won't you just go away already?!"

The pounding stopped. Kumori let out a shuddering breath, sitting there in wonderful, agonizing silence, and then—

The whispered admission came, forlorn and unbidden. "Because I love you."

The pain in Kumori's chest blossomed, bursting forth and engulfing her chest in hot, fiery agony.

Choked sobs tore themselves from Kumori's throat as she ripped the rest of the bodice of her dress apart and looked at the enormous, fresh pink scar running from her collarbone to her right hip. The wound had already healed, so why was her chest hurting so _much_ still?

Clutching the tattered shreds of lace and silk to her chest, the little pink-haired child cried alone in want of human company in the cold room, the rays of the setting sun casting a rosy glow to world, bathing her in a sea of crimson blood.


	7. Late-night Snack

**Chapter 7 here, hope yall likes this! Short and sweeeeeet! Hopes yall enjoy, heheh…! Oh wait, warning: perhaps some slightly weird make out scenes?**

**DISCLAIMER: (Almost forgot it this time around, hah!) I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori)!**

**OwO**

Late-night Snack

She didn't know how long she sat there in front of the door, but by the time Kumori slowly got to her feet, the sun had long since set, immersing the world in shadows. She made her way to the bath and let the bath tub fill itself up more than halfway before haltingly stripping off her blood-drenched dress and washing off the dried blood that had coated itself to her skin. Her tummy grumbled as the water turned an appetizing red the color of cherries drenched in molasses.

Quickly drying off her damp pink hair with a towel, Kumori slipped on a pale, gauzy white nightdress. Night had fallen, so Jerry was probably sound asleep, but Kumori was hungry. If she were to wait until morning, something like _that_—the image of torn limbs and shredded organs rose up, unbidden—might happen again.

One hand gently gripping onto Pichoncho, Kumori quietly opened the door to her room. Hopefully, Jerry would have left some—

She squealed as she tripped over something warm lying in the doorway. Someone's hand wrapped itself across her mouth, its pair familiarizing itself with her slim waist, and Kumori emitted a muffled shriek, madly waving her arms about. Her flailing slowed when a familiar voice whispered something slowly into her ear.

"Kumo-chan, stop!" It was…

"L-Lavi…" Kumori stammered, ceasing her frantic movements. She fidgeted when Lavi laid her in his lap, but he only tightened his hold on her, and she eventually stopped, snuggling her head into the crook of his neck and simply basking in his warmth. He held her so firmly, so tenderly to his chest, as if she might fly off if he didn't. She probably would. She _was_ pretty hungry…

"Ne, Lavi, l-lemme go," she protested weakly, her hands resting on his chest. Her hunger was growing, and the strange heat in her tummy _had_ dimmed since Tyki had hugged her, but not that much. If she wasn't careful, she might hurt Lavi.

"You sure, Kumori?" She nodded mutely. Lavi chuckled softly as her hands grasped at his chest, knotting the fabric of his shirt tighter and tighter around her small, porcelain fingers.

"You're body doesn't seem to, though." She pouted, and Lavi found his eyes drawn to her lips.

"Ne, Lavi…"

He smiled. "I like it when you call me Lavi." Kumori frowned and puckered her lips, and Lavi found himself biting his. He mentally shook his head. _Stop looking at her lips!_ He quickly glanced away, only to find his eyes drawn to her body. The nightgown she was wearing was so _transparent_, not to mention _revealing_—it was a short, frilly thing that ended a little above the knee with two thin straps to keep it from falling of her slim shoulders. The neckline dipped low, too, exposing lots of pale, milky-white skin…

Lavi looked away and gulped. If he wasn't careful, he might do something _bad._

As if sensing his dirty thoughts, she hid her face in the crook of his neck, which was just as bad, if not _worse_, since Lavi could feel himself getting hotter. He placed one hand on the back of her head and, just so he'd have something to keep his hand occupied, began stroking her hair.

"N-Ne, how long have you been sitting here…?"

"The entire time."

"I-I'm sorry," she muttered, snuggling in closer to him. Lavi flushed. He'd have to take a long, cold shower after this. "I don't hate you Lavi, you know that, right?" At this, she looked up at him with anxious, teary eyes, and his heart skipped a beat.

"How wouldn't I?" he replied, gently tightening his hold on her and propping his chin on the top of her head.

Despite her intensifying hunger and need for him to leave so she could feed, relief swept through her at his words, and Kumori allowed her arms to slowly wrap themselves around his waist. "I'm sorry for being mean and saying hurtful things, Lavi. I-I just didn't want…" Her breath hitched, and she nestled in closer to him. "I don't want to lose you, too."

Lavi stilled. Too? "No worries, Kumori. I don't plan on losing you to anyone else, either, because I love you."

"R-Really?"

"Really really."

"But what if I was some kind of monster, or an akuma…?"

"Monster or akuma, I'd still love you." _Just like how Krory loved Eliade_, thought Lavi.

"No crying allowed, Kumo-chan," he said, lifting her head and cupping one cheek in his hand. She sniffled, another huge tear rolling down the side of her face. "If you don't stop, I'm going to hafta make you," he teased.

She smiled unsteadily. "What're you going to do if I don't, ne, La—?"

Her retort was cut short by his lips crashing down on hers.

**w**

The kiss was sweet—had he been eating candy? —and gentle, but it quickly escalated into something else, something rough and painful but oddly… pleasant.

Kumori wasn't sure what this was, but she knew this wasn't the usual way she and Lavi kissed. It was usually playful and friendly, but this…

There was a, a frantic energy about it, a madness, as if there was a hunger in Lavi that he'd been dying to sate and, now that he finally could, would do so to the utmost of his ability.

She didn't protest when he slipped his tongue into her mouth, since _that_ felt really nice too after they set up a steady rhythm.

Kumori broke the kiss. "Lavi, I—" She forgot what she was going to say when he started nuzzling her neck. She shivered as she felt his hands make their way from her waist to her lower back and lower still…

"Hm?"

She hummed. It felt so _nice_…

"Does it?" he asked. Kumori blushed. She hadn't even realized she'd said it aloud.

"N-Ne, Lavi…" She lost her train of thought again as the butterfly kisses slowly made their way up from her neck to her cheeks, brushing away residual tears before unhurriedly retracing their way back down her throat to her clavicle. Kumori sighed, her fingers wrapping themselves into Lavi's long, silky red locks as his lips dipped perilously lower. Embedding her face into his hair with a content sigh, Kumori breathed in his familiar scent of faded books and fresh ink and gentle, masculine warmth.

She started as something big began gently rubbing against her down below. "Lavi…?"

"Kumori…" He breathed, nuzzling his head lower onto her chest.

"I-I…" What was she saying? "Lavi, I…"

The hunger quickly solved that problem, rising up and lashing out at her, quickly clearing her mind.

"Ah!" Kumori abruptly shot to her feet, her hands brushing out the bottom of her nightgown, which had somehow ridden up around her hips. She quickly fixed the straps of her gown, which had slipped down off her shoulders. "I-I'm feeling sorta hungry, Lavi, so—I-I hafta go eat something, s-so you should go sleep!" She grabbed Pichoncho—had it been watching them the entire time?—holding the golem between her and Lavi as a buffer before giving the redhead a quick peck on the cheek. "Goodnight!" she hurriedly whispered before turning around and rushing off to the dining hall, hearing the faint sound of laughter echoing in her ears as she did.

She raised a hesitant hand to her swollen lips, and that was when she realized something—the heat in her tummy had died down and disappeared.

**/**

**Okay… I COULDN'T RESIST IT! *BREAKS OUT INTO PEALS OF GIRLISH, LOVEYDOVEY GIGGLES*Just wanted some LaviLove time there, it was totally spur of the moment. But now that it's HAPPENED… heheh, filler chapters coming up soon, maybe~? Though… that last part doesn't bode well for our redheaded friend…**

**MAKE WHAT YOU WILL OF THIS (INAPPROPRIATE?)OCCURRENCE, HAHAH! BUT… tell me if, in the future, should any more weird make out scenes occur… would you prefer if I kept it the details to a bare minimum, or get all uber-detailed like those yaoi fanfics out there do? Don't wanna weird anyone out with excessive details, ya know. Oh, the term I was looking for musta been EROTIC. Want that, or no? So yeah, REVIEW and tell me! Please!**

**Oh, but yeah. That's all I wanted to say, the thing about Lavi, heheheh…**

**Til next time!**


	8. Love Counseling

**Chapter 8 here, hope yall enjoy! Er, may be some major(?) OOCness from Lavi, so… BEWARE!**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori)!**

**OvO**

Love Counseling

"What's wrong?" Kumori looked up from the floor and saw Lenalee bending over, her head tilted in a quizzical manner.

"Ah, nothing, Lena-chan! I just didn't sleep much," Kumori yawned.

"Why's that? Does it have anything to do with Kyoko?" Lenalee asked, looking her over with concern.

Kumori's eyes widened. "Nani? Ah, not really." She paused. "Do you know about…?"

"Yeah, Nii-san told me about it, the first day you arrived."

"Eh, really? And it doesn't… bother you?" Kumori asked, looking for the Chinese girl's reaction out of the corner of her eye.

"Not at all," she replied, giving Kumori a warm, reassuring smile. "It doesn't matter to me whether you're 100% human or not. I care for you, just as I do Allen. Just because he's a Noah doesn't mean I don't love him any less. If anything, it makes me love—" Lenalee turned and saw the shorter girl's face turn a pale shade of pink. "What is it?"

"Ah, nothing! Just that when you said 'love' I remembered that…" Kumori's face turned an even rosier color when she remembered Lavi, and her, and his hands, and her lips…

"What did you remember?" Lenalee asked, interest piqued. "It's interesting, I can tell!"

"Ah, nothing! Just that, yesterday…" she paused before shutting her eyes tightly and letting it all out in a rushed mesh of words. "ItoldLaviIhatedhimbuthesaidh elovedmethenIcriedandwekisse dandthen—!"

"Lavi what—? Wait, slow down!" Lenalee cried. "Take a deep breath and start over."

"H-Hai…" Kumori complied, taking one long, deep breath before slowly exhaling. "Uhn, well, I was reaaally upset yesterday because of what happened with Kyoko, ne? Well, Lavi found me, and I yelled at him and said mean stuff to him and then h-he—" She buried her face in Pichoncho's ears. "She dead be lonely."

"What?"

"De shed fee loathe sea."

"K-Kumori, I don't—"

"He said he loves me!" she squeaked, causing several curious heads to turn.

"Shhh! Come on!" Lenalee snatched Kumori's hand, pulling her along with her until they reached a dark, secluded corridor.

"Okay, so—tell me, what happened?" Lenalee whispered.

"Uhn, well, Lavi said that he loves me," Kumori repeated in hushed tones, her pointing fingers connected and twirling around in a nervous, circular motion. "And I think he means he loves me the way you love Allen."

"R-Really?" Lenalee gasped. "He finally said it!" she squealed, seizing Kumori in a tight embrace. She dropped the smaller girl when she remembered that conversation during the training session.

"Y-You don't know if you love him or not, huh…"

"Uhn… How do you know if you 'love' people that way?" she asked, confusion written clear all over her face.

A small smile appeared on the Chinese girl's face. "It's a secret, Kumori, one you'll have to find out for yourself. But…" She face puckered slightly before returning to more content features. "You'll know it's not the One—"

"'The One'?"

"Ah, the one person you want to spend forever with."

"I wouldn't mind spending forever with Lavi." Especially if they were going to do nice things like _that_ a lot.

"But with the One, you wouldn't just be _fine_ being with them, you'd _want_ to be with them."

Kumori's eyebrows rose in consternation. "But I _do_ want to be with him."

"Is it the same way you want to be with me and Nii-san?"

"Ah, so what you're saying is… you know you love them if you want to be with them more than all the _other_ people you love too?" she asked, clutching Pichoncho closer to her.

Lenalee laughed. "C-Close enough, for now I guess…"

"'Love' is so _confusing_." She rammed her head into that of the rabbit's and instantly regretted it when she remembered all the things she'd stuck in there.

"Ow…"

"You alright, Kumo-chan?"

"Uhn—" she jumped as Lavi planted a kiss right on her forehead. Kumori's eyes flicked over to Lenalee, who was looking at them appraisingly. Lavi commenced patting her head.

"What's wrong?" he asked, giving her an innocent smile.

"Nothing!" Kumori giggled. _Did_ she crave Lavi's company more than anyone else's?

"Say, where's Kyoko-chan?" Lavi asked, looking around the corridor for the bespectacled girl.

"Nii-san said he had something to talk to her about… Ah, Lavi!"

"Yeah?"

"I just remembered something I had to talk to you about. Would you—?"

"Sure, in a bit!" Without warning, Lavi swept Kumori up off her feet and carried her bridal style to the dining hall, laughing all the while.

"L-Lavi, slow down!" she giggled, tightening her hold on him. Chortling, he ignored her and instead quickened his pace, and they burst into the dining hall laughing uproariously, drawing the attention of all the diners, one of which was a certain black-haired, bespectacled Japanese girl. Lavi's eyes were on Kumori's face and hers alone, so the instant the pixie's smile dimmed a bit, Lavi looked around for the cause and frowned when he saw Kyoko slinking out the other dining hall entryway.

"Laviii!" she squealed, giggling and kicking her feet about. "Let me _down!_"

"Sure thing, Kumo-chan!" He tilted his head to Kumori's and, much to the surprise of said girl and their fellow diners, planted a large kiss smack dab on her lips.

"Ow!" Lavi cried out, snapping his head around to glare at his attacker. "What was that for, Lenalee?"

She frowned at him and raised her finger, pointing it threateningly at the redhead before speaking. "You know perfectly well why."

Kumori used this as a chance to jump out of Lavi's arms and flit over to the safety of Jerry's counter.

"Morning, Jerry!"

"Good morning, Kumori-chan!" the chef replied, giving her a wide grin. "You wouldn't be able to guess what happened last night!"

"Nani, nani?"

"Well, it turns out some _fairies_," at this he gave her a significant, knowing look, "came in last night and made off with a couple of the pastries I'd saved just for today."

"Ehhh, really?" Kumori replied, feigning surprise. "That's too bad! And I was sooo looking forward to some cherry pie and custard cake today!"

"Hm? How'd you know I had some cherry pie and custard cake laid out, Kumori-chan?"

"Ah, j-just a lucky guess… Ne, ne, Jerry, can I have some—?" Kumori then named dozens of dishes, all of which were eventually brought and laid out before her.

"Itadekimasu~!" she exclaimed, eagerly picking up a spoon. She'd already gone through two dishes when Lenalee came and sat down across from her, the redheaded Lavi claiming the seat beside her.

"Kumo-chan, you're such a messy eater!" Lavi teasingly pointed out, propping his arm on the table and leaning his head against it.

"Ah, Kumori-chan, you have a little…" Lenalee motioned to her cheek and giggled when Kumori failed to wipe up all the gravy on her face.

"Eh, really? Where—?"

"No worries, Kumori, I got it." Lavi languidly leaned over and licked up the bits of gravy at the edge of Kumori's lips.

For his troubles, he received some more divine retribution from the green-haired girl.

"W-What's _that_ for?" Lavi whined, giving Lenalee a look so reproachful that, had Komui Lee seen it aimed at his adorable little sister, the wearer would have suffered so terribly that the tragedy would've imprinted itself on the very walls of the Order and continued to haunt them long after the poor fool had already died.

"Come on, Lavi. I have something to talk to you about. We should do it now and let Kumori finish up her food."

"Sure, if it's that urgent…" he turned and gave Kumori another kiss, this one being a quick, chaste peck on the cheek due to the effects of the first not-so-innocent two.

The two walked in silence for a bit as they exited the dining hall, but that silence was quickly broken by an impatient Lavi. "So, what's up, Lenalee-chan?"

"I'm here to talk about Kumori-chan and you."

"What about us?" he replied nonchalantly, leaning against a pillar.

"That's exactly what I'm saying. There is no 'us'. Only you, and Kumori."

"Shouldn't that be between me and her?"

Lenalee gave a weary sigh. "Yes, Lavi, and I'm sorry for being so nosy, but Kumori doesn't…"

"Kumori doesn't what?"

"She doesn't really get the distinction between love and—_love_."

"She gets it fine." She got it fine _last night_, although he knew better than to say it in Lenalee's hearing.

"No, Lavi, she doesn't." Lenalee repeated, giving him a sympathetic smile. "When we were training, I asked her if she loved anyone. Care to guess who she said she loved?"

At the redhead's silence, she continued. "Jerry." She then helped the red-haired Junior Bookman up off the floor. "I had to explain to her the difference today, after she told me that you told her you love her."

"S-She told you…?"

"Of course!" Lenalee sighed. "She gets really confused when the topic of 'love' comes up… it's like explaining it to a child, but worse." She turned around and started heading back towards the dining hall.

"Well, if she doesn't understand, I'll just hafta show her." She paused mid-step.

"Lavi…" The green-haired exorcist turned around and gave Lavi a Look, one that far surpassed the one she'd received from him. "Don't press Kumori for more than she's able to give, else you'll have more than love troubles on your hands."


	9. Carmine Conunerdrum

**Yellos, chapter 9 here. Sorta forgot to do this scene til now, so… rather short, but at least its here! Not much to go through. Er, I've the sinking feeling that I'm talking to myself, so… to assuage my fears, why don't yall gimme some reviews or something, ne?**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori)!**

**OvO**

Carmine Conunerdrum

Wisely was a reclining on the loveseat in a quiet part of the arc when he heard a sudden, familiar mental and verbal din. He sighed as the twins burst into the room.

"Damn you, fucking Tyki!"

"That was our Innocence, hii!"

"You didn't think to come tell us you took it already, and we were fucking looking everywhere and wasting our time!" Wisely frowned as the twins angrily stomped about like childish cavemen. Debitto's gold eyes alighted on him and narrowed. "_You_. Why didn't you just use your mind ability thingy and tell us, you asshole!"

The darker twin continued with his rant, madly waving his gun about. Wisely responded only by closing his eyes and putting one hand to his head. Their appearance had brought back his headache. A snort of amusement drew his eyes to the door, where Tyki was leaning against the frame.

"Oi, you listening?"

"Let's just punish him, hii!"

"You two are idiots," Tyki declared, pushing himself off the door frame and striding into the room.

"Dare you to say that again, Tyki!" Debitto shouted, pointing a gold gun at the tall Noah, who merely snorted.

"Fine by me," he drawled. "You two are idiots. He'd be prepared for whatever you would plan, remember?" he said, pointing to the side of his head.

"S-Shut up, Tyki!" Debitto retorted, fuming.

Tyki turned to Wisely, ignoring the darker twin's temper tantrum. "Did you tell the Earl yet?"

"Tell him what, hii?"

"About the little conundrum we met in Fierre," Tyki replied, flipping open a thick novel to a book-marked page. He didn't like dog-earing his pages; it ruined the perfection of the piece.

_Nope_.

Tyki raised an eyebrow at the mental intrusion. "Why not?" _Especially if you could just tell him like this?_

_That's a breach of privacy_ was the mind reader's response. Tyki snorted. What did he call this, then?

Wisely smirked, and Tyki's eyes narrowed.

Debitto, finally noticing that the conversation in the room had puttered out and taken a mental turn, turned to glare at the other two Noah. "What is it?" he asked Jasdero out of the side of his mouth.

"They met a conunerdrum, hii."

"Conundrum," Tyki corrected. At the twins' blank looks, he elaborated. "A mystery." Another blank look. "A puzzle or riddle."

"Why didn't you just say so?"

Tyki face palmed. "I _did_."

"What was the conunerdrum, hii?"

Sighing at Jasdero's persisting grammatical inadequacies, Tyki gave up trying to correct him and merely got to the point. "There was an exorcist in Fierre—"

"There're exorcists in America, too," Debitto snickered, Jasdero sniggering along with him.

Tyki gave them a disparaging smile. "Why yes, there are, aren't there, Debitto? And I take it those exorcists are all pink-haired, akuma-like pixies that can use Innocence, are they?"

That instantly shut them up.

"Akuma can't use Innocence…" Jasdero murmured, looking at Debitto for confirmation.

"Yes, hence the 'like' in the sentence," Tyki replied.

"Hey, Debitto, didn't we see a pink-haired little kitty—?"

"D-Don't say it, Jas!"

"R-Right, we didn't see pink-haired pixies in black dresses, nope, hii!"

Tyki rolled his eyes and turned to Wisely, who'd remained silent throughout the exchange. "So, are you going to tell the Earl, or will I?"

Wisely heaved a large, exhausted sigh and got to his feet. "I'll do it." Anything to get away from their noise.

**v**

"Hello, Wisely~ **‹**3" The Millenium Earl gave the 5th disciple a grin, which he returned with a limp smirk. "What is it you have to tell me~ **‹**3?"

"You probably already heard and saw it for yourself, but I'm going to say this anyways because Tyki keeps bugging me."

"Is it about the exorcist girl~ **‹**3?" the Earl inquired. "If so, I already saw what a big appetite she has~ **‹**3"

"It's not about her strange appetite," Wisely responded. "It's about the fact that she _knows_ the Fourteenth."

"Oh~ **‹**3?" The Earl's tone took on a slightly-less cheery note. Was that jealousy that Wisely detected? He couldn't tell for sure without reading the Earl's mind, and, despite his habit of eavesdropping on the other Noah, Wisely made sure to keep out of the Earl's mind as much as possible. It wasn't the most pleasant place to be.

"She recognized Tyki's resemblance to the Fourteenth."

"Is that so~ **‹**3" the Earl replied, sounding less-than-pleased while at the same time maintaining a jolly façade. "I'd absolutely l_ove_ to meet a friend of Nea's~ **‹**3"

"I wouldn't, Lero!" Wisely turned a hooded gaze to the Earl's annoying talking umbrella. The golem talked too much for Wisely's liking.

"Really~ **‹**3? I think it would be quite interesting~ **‹**3"

"I'll get Tyki to bring her over sometime for dinner," Wisely smirked. It'd be pretty easy, since it'd been obvious that the girl had been quite taken with the Noah of Pleasure. For some reason, that didn't sit well with him.


	10. Mission Mongrel

**Yellos, chapter 10 here… took so long cuz I accidentally deleted the original chapter, so I had to redo it (again, **_**UGH**_**) so yeah, I was annoyed while writing this (REPETITIVE) chapter…**

**If you've been keeping up with my uploads, then this isn't the chapter for you! Go to Chapter 12! The numbering of chapters changed cuz I split a couple, so yeah.**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori)!**

**OvO**

Mission Mongrel

It'd been more than a week since the failed mission, but Kyoko still wasn't talking to Kumori. She still ate lunch with them sometimes, but that was probably because Leverrier had forced her into being his little spy. Lavi had gone back to normal though—no more weird behavior like he had after… _that_. Kumori was sort of relieved, actually. She wouldn't have to worry about him stealing any delicious food from her, like right now.

Kumori dug into her third slice of German chocolate cake, savoring the thick, chocolaty sweetness.

"Dame, Lavi!" she reprimanded, swiping her slice of cake out from under the redhead's hands.

"But Kumo-chan, I'm hungry!"

"We're in the dining hall, Lavi! Jerry can make you some yakiniku," Kumori tittered, shoveling another big spoonful into her mouth, enjoying both its sweet taste and the comical look on Lavi's face.

He wrapped his arms around her slim waist. "Kumo-chan's too cold!"

"And Lavi's too warm!" Her giggles died as Kyoko came up to their table.

"Komui-san wishes to see us in his office," she smoothly spoke, a quick eye flitting to Lavi's arm around Kumori's waist before she turned around and made her way through the crowd and out of the dining hall.

Lavi turned to look at Kumori, who had turned back to her German chocolate cake with forced gusto. "You two should make up, Kumo-chan."

Kumori puffed up her cheeks and turned her head away. "She's the one who needs to apologize!"

Lavi sighed, propping his head on the hand he'd laid on the table. "We should hurry and go see what Komui-san needs, shouldn't we, Kumo-chan…?" He looked up and saw that the table was short one pink-haired pixie and one pink rabbit, not to mention one slice of German chocolate cake.

Lavi stood up and glanced around the dining hall, his eyes alighting instantly on the two blobs of atomic pink at the entrance to the dining hall, one of which gave him one mocking wave before flitting out of his sight.

**OxO**

Lavi tried not to fidget as the air steadily grew colder. Taking it upon himself, he'd stood between Kyoko and Kumori, a physical barrier to their current, temporary antagonism for each other. He was quickly coming to regret it as he felt another cold, penetrating gaze turn itself on him, burning into the side of his head. He sighed. The things he did for love…

Komui took another languid sip of coffee, yet again oblivious to the tension in the room. "I have another mission for you and Kyoko, Kumori!" he declared, giving her a big smile, not noticing as her limp smile deflated and the air in the room turned even colder.

"This one will be easier than the last one, Kumori," he reassured them, taking in the skepticism of the pink-haired girl. "Lavi will be going with you—"

"Ne, really? Why is Kyoko here then?" Kumori asked.

"The mission is in Rome, Florence, and since Kyoko has already been to Sassari, she can just take the three of you quickly there through one of her portals. Once you reach Sassari, getting to Rome should be simple."

"Isn't Sassari an island—?"

"_Where'd you get that?_" Lavi turned abruptly and watched in rapt confusion as Kumori snatched a mirror out of Kyoko's hands.

"From Pichoncho, back in Fierre—"

"_Don't_ go through my **stuff!**" Kumori snapped, hurriedly unzipping the pink rabbit and gently, reverentially laying the hand-sized mirror into the white stuffing. From his vantage point, Lavi could see a number of items in the pouch—a vial of glittering dust, dry, withered flowers in a glass jar the size of your forefinger, a round silver sterling bauble inlaid with small, bright blue gems, a large, ornate gold key… There were more items in there, of course—Kumori's rabbit plush was like a textile treasure chest—but Kumori, as if aware of all the intrusive stares, quickly zipped the rabbit back up. Turning to give them all one admonishing glare, she huffed and hugged the rabbit closer to her, as if to stave off their intrusive stares.

"Well," Kyoko huffed, gathering the last threads of propriety she could from the awkward scene, "we'd best be leaving. By your leave then, Komui-san." She purposefully strode up to the large window behind his desk and laid one hand against it.

"Activate, Looking Glass." Almost immediately, the window began to glow a faint, pale green. The black-haired girl lowered her hand, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "Hurry over. You two need to be directly touching me for this to work."

Kumori reluctantly walked over and grabbed onto one of her hands, Lavi doing the same. Pichoncho flew over, and Kumori forced Kyoko's hand onto one of the golem's wings.

"Ja ne, Komui—" The rest of Kumori's goodbye was cut off as Kyoko walked through the glass portal. Kumori had done this several times before, of course, but for Lavi, the feeling of several pairs of ghostly hands trailing fingers through along his skin and through his innards was disconcerting, to say the least.

Lavi blinked as the three of them stepped out into a blindingly white hall of mirrors. He gawked as he saw that the reflections weren't actually _reflections_—just more portal like the one they'd just passed through.

"Hey, you should take somewhere nice soon, when we aren't on a mission," Lavi suggested, taking a closer look at a portal whose view overlooked a lush green grove of pristine walkways and floral arrangements.

"Hurry, Lavi!" Kumori called out, rushing to keep up with Kyoko, who was striding purposefully past several portals with interesting vantage points, eyes flickering around for a particular gateway.

"This place is pretty cool," Lavi admitted, jogging to catch up to them.

"Say what you will," Kyoko murmured disconsolately, the window slowly giving way under her palm, a ripple effect taking effect, distorting the projected image.

The exorcists and golem latched onto her body parts, and they stepped through the portal.

**.O**

"Long time no see, Michael!"

"Hello, Lavi," the Finder replied, giving the redhead a light smile as he clapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and found himself shaking hands with a slender black-haired girl with glasses.

"I'm Kyoko Kawasaki," she said, pumping his hand. "Nice to have made your acquaintance." This was a lie, of course. Kyoko and the others had spent a few unpleasant hours on a furiously rocking, rickety fishing boat, and once they'd got to the city, they'd had to spend a half-hour finding the Finder. The sun had fallen below the line of the horizon by the time they'd found him.

"Likewise." He looked around. "Weren't there supposed to be three—?"

"Kochi, kochi, Michael-kun!" The Finder turned around to find himself being tackled by a short pink blur.

"You must be Kumori-san!" He laughed as said girl wrapped her limbs around him and planted a big kiss on his cheek, her bright mane of hair intermingling with his. The Finder watched bemusedly as the redhead swiftly plucked the slight pixie out of his arms and clutched her to him possessively. Kumori giggled before planting a kiss on Lavi's cheek and turning to beam innocently at Michael.

Kyoko sighed and pushed the glasses up the bridge of her nose. "Can we get started, please?" The sun was already starting to set, and she wanted to get to an inn as quickly as they could and rest.

"Ah, yes," Michael responded, giving her a more reserved smile. "Well, in case Komui-san hasn't briefed any of you yet…" He cleared his throat. "There is an old legend here, one concerning a young girl abandoned in the surrounding wood that was found and raised by wolves."

"Ah, like Romulus and Remus."

"Romus and Remelus?" Kumori asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Romulus and Remus," Lavi corrected, "were the founders of Rome, back in the day. Right, Michael?"

"Yes, you're right, Lavi."

"Ne, Lavi, you're reaaally smart, ya know?" Kumori giggled, butting his side with her head.

"Can we get back to the story, please?" Kyoko sighed, giving the pair of them an exasperated stare.

Kumori huffed and looked away, giving Michael an encouraging grin. "Michael, what happened next?"

"The wolves were being threatened by the presence of the townspeople. It was because of this that the wolves and townspeople eventually clashed. A battle ensued, one in which the Wolf Princess—"

"She was a princess?!" Kumori gaped, eyes shining. The shine dimmed a bit when the Finder laughed and refuted her conjecture.

"'Wolf Princess' was just what the townspeople called her, since she had no actual name. As the legend goes, the wolf goddess Lupa took pity on her and gifted her with the ability to shift forms, from woman to wolf and back again."

"Wait… so she's a werewolf?" How nostalgic, Lavi thought. This was like the case with Krory that he'd gone on with Allen and Bookman, almost a year ago.

"No. She was—"

"Could you just skip straight to how this pertains to the mission?" Kyoko interrupted, patting her disheveled, unruly hair into place. She wanted to get into a nice, comfortable bed already, and here those three were, wandering around town chatting up a storm while dead on their feet.

Michael gave her a patient smile. "Well, there seems to have been a resurrection of the Wolf Princess. Lately, there's been a white-clad person—a young woman, actually—creating quite a few disturbances, and there've been several witnesses who say they saw her morph into a large white wolf."

"And this is definitely Innocence-related?" Kyoko asked.

"Yes," Michael replied. "There have been a great number of akuma appearing lately, and all these appearances have been made in the same area of the disturbances in which the Wolf Princess has been sighted."

"Ne, Michael-san, when do you think we can meet her, the Wolf Princess?" Kumori asked eagerly, bouncing agilely around them on the balls of her feet, despite the thick black pumps she was wearing, although, unlike the previous mission, she wasn't decked out in an excessively frilly dress of black lace.

Kyoko noted that, this time around, she'd donned her version of the Black Order uniform, which consisted of a black and red vest with fashionably long coat tails, and indecently short black shorts that left little to the imagination. Coupled with this were white gloves and black and white vertically-striped tights. An enormous black hat similar to the one worn by the late General Cross perched atop the golem's head, waiting for the pink pixie's retrieval.

"There isn't a pattern to any of the Wolf Princess' appearances," Michael admitted, giving the black-haired exorcist an apologetic smile. "It's always happened during the night, though. Of that we're certain." Kyoko stifled a groan. So she wasn't going to be getting any sleep tonight or any other night, was she.

"Eh, really?" Kumori replied, pursing her lips. "Ne, but I'm tired…"

"Ah, forgive me!" Michael chuckled. "Let's get you all to the inn. I've already made preparations…"

"Wait, wait!" They all stopped and stared at Kumori, who was pointing furiously at something.

"What is it, Kumo-chan?"

"It's a ghost!" At this, they all turned to look skeptically at what Kumori was pointing at. They all reeled back in shock when they saw a white figure steal silently through the unexpectedly deserted street and suddenly disappear.

"Holy—!" Lavi turned to the other two. "I didn't imagine that, did I?"

"I-I saw it too," Kyoko admitted, wiping at her glasses just in case it'd been some speck on the lens that had caused the appearance of the apparition.

"Kumori-san!" Lavi and Kyoko turned in time to see Kumori run off after the white-clad figure, Pichoncho flying low alongside her.

"Wait up, Kumo-chan!" Lavi cried. "You're not supposed to go chasin' after ghosts!" Swearing lightly, he rushed off after the pixie, Kyoko and Michael not far behind.

**O.**

**Yes, Michael is part of DGM! Bet yall didn't remember that little tidbit, huh?! If you did, kudos to you!**

**But yeah, he's only in the anime, the Leaf of Revival arc, which is… 25-27, I think? Can't remember, but yeah! I didn't remember his existence until I rewatched that arc and I was like "Oh, yeah! THAT guy!" Well, decided to stick him in here. Yep, thazall~!**


	11. Manifestations and Moonbeams

**This was originally part of chapter 10, but… I went and split the previous chapters. So… yep.**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori)!**

**OvO**

Manifestations and Moonbeams

Kumori puffed out her cheeks as she chased after the white ghost, her pink golem faithfully following after her. She sighed in exasperation as she saw a white tail disappear around a street corner. How was it so fast when all it seemed to do was glide across the floor?

"Ahhh, slow _down!_" Kumori growled as the white figure in front of her increased her steps instead. "Activate, Dark Heart!" The shadows around Kumori surged forward in sudden activity. Biting her finger, she waited for a bead of blood to well up before flicking into the churning, embroiling mass of dark transparency, which instantly solidified and pulsated.

"You're not gonna get away~!" Kumori trilled, giggling in wicked delight as the shadows surged forward and engulfed the ghost. "Gotcha!" The golem flittered curiously around the white figure, darting in and out of the solid tendrils of darkness that suspended the figure above the ground.

"Kumori!" She turned around and beamed at Lavi and the others, who were just rounding a street corner.

"Look, I caught the ghost!" Kumori cried out triumphantly, snagging one of Lavi's sleeves and propelling him forward. Reluctantly, he stepped closer to the form writhing in the mass of darkness, cringing as a black tendril slithered too close to his hand.

"Is this Kumori-san's Innocence?" Michael asked, standing a safe distance away from both the white figure and the black mass.

"Yes," Kyoko replied, panting slightly. The run had exerted her more than she'd thought it would. "Dark Heart allows her to control shadows and give them a more corporeal form."

"Well, at least we know that isn't a ghost," Michael breathily laughed, relief saturating his words. "If it was, she wouldn't have been able to catch it."

"Strike!"

Kyoko's head jerked up, and she watched in growing embarrassment as the white figure dropped out of the suddenly insubstantial shadows and was eagerly, promptly embraced by an overexcited Lavi.

"Sorry 'bout that!" Lavi laughed. "Kumo-chan has a habit of jumpin' the gun!"

"That's fine," a feminine voice responded. Kyoko shook her head in disgust as the redhead's puppy dog eyes didn't waver, even when the former ghost shoved him roughly away. The black-haired girl went and stood protectively in front of Kumori, who was oblivious to the death glares currently being sent her way by the ghost girl.

"Care to explain what that was?" the girl snapped, stepping forward threateningly.

"Uhn? Ah, gomen ne!" Kumoi giggled unapologetically. "I thought you were a ghost! I've never caught one before, and I wanted to see what they tasted like, since they look like _biiig_ marshmallows!" She threw up her arms to emphasize their enormity.

"She's just kiddin', of course!" Lavi laughed, ruffling Kumori's hair lovingly, his hands lingering longer than propriety dictated. "We're exorcists lookin' for—"

"That doesn't explain why _she_ attacked me," the young woman snapped, shoving the bespectacled girl out of the way and towering over the short pixie. With her white-blond hair flying all over her livid, snarling face, the young woman looked like some feral animal about to seize and slaughter.

"Ne, stop interrupting Lavi!" Kumori pouted, foolishly sticking her tongue out at the already furious woman, with no regards for the consequences.

"Kumo-chan, stop agitatin' her, will ya?" Lavi admonished, helping Kyoko to her feet.

Kumori ignored him. "You're reaaally mean, you know?" she accused, spearing the fair-haired girl with haunting amber eyes filled with distaste.

"And you're really disrespectful," the blond woman retorted. "You should pay more respect to your elders."

The petite pink-haired girl wrinkled her nose. "I didn't think you were _that_ old."

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Watch your _tongue_, girl, lest you _lose_ it."

"Hai, hai, _oba-san_—" Kumori's head whipped back as the woman's hand lashed out and hit her cheek with a sharp, resounding smack, the force of the blow sending her twirling backwards in three revolutions before crumpling to the floor.

"Kumori-san!" Michael cried out, rushing over and helping the girl unsteadily to her feet. "Are you alright?"

"What the—!" Lavi whirled around angrily. "Oi!" He let out a string of curses as he saw the white-clad figure make its way off into the gloom. He glanced back at his friends, his heart clenching when he saw the bright, glossy sheen to his pink-haired love's eyes.

"Why'd you irritate her like that, Kumori?" Kyoko sighed, picking up the black hat that had fallen from the golem's head.

"She made me hungry. Plus, she was being _mean_," Kumori pouted, her lips trembling in the moonlight.

Lavi sighed in mild exasperation. "Come here, Kumo." She shook her head, refusing for only a moment before relenting and tackling Lavi, clutching at him with her fingers.

The redheaded exorcist patted her on the head, burying his face in her pink locks. He looked up and saw Michael staring at him with a strange look in his eye.

When the Finder saw Lavi staring at him, he gave the redhead a small smile. "Beautiful women are _cruel_, aren't they?" Lavi returned Michael's smile with a grim one of his own.

Lavi couldn't agree more.


	12. Earthly Pleasures

**Imma stop with my annoying "Yellos, Chapter [insert number here]" greetings, cuz I'm starting to find them annoying, as you guys are too, probably… imma just put the chapter and disclaimer, as well as the title after the line break. Well… Chapter 12.**

**Well, expect OOCness (?) and weird fluff (hopefully?)!**

**I think I've decided on the pairing. Well, I THOUGHT I'd decided—it'd seemed pretty obvious to me at the beginning, but I had a sudden change of heart right before starting this!**

**Ah, yes, made some adjustments to previous chapters, but yall will only know what if you been reading from the start, which I doubt anyone has, since I don't seem to be getting much reviews… Ahem, for those whose brains functioning on different, more spectacular wave lengths and frequencies… THAT WAS YOUR CUE.**

**Since FFDotNet's such a BITCH and wont lemme keep my own line breaks and I'm tired of having to go and edit in THEIR line breaks, I just decided to do emoticons and cute smileys.**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori, and… the unnamed "young woman")!**

**v**

Earthly Pleasures

From the safety of the shadows, Tyki watched as the young woman clad in white made her way closer to the dark doorway in which he stood. There was a sharp, feral beauty to the angular lines of her face, which was a pale, creamy hue that Tyki knew to be quite soft and smooth.

He stepped out of the shadows and watched as the lines of ire that had etched themselves onto the girl's face smoothed themselves out. With inhuman speed, she threw herself at him, and Tyki caught her in his strong arms.

"Sorry I'm late," she murmured huskily, giving him a coy smile full of sharp, pointed teeth. "I met a little trouble on the way here," she added, wrapping her bare arms around his neck and pulling him closer to her, arcing her full, warm body and pressing it to his.

"Oh?" Tyki replied, burying his face in locks of her messy white-blond hair before nuzzling her neck. She tasted of the woods, of wild, untamed things that thirsted for blood and death. The wolf must have escaped again, running amok and causing trouble for him, killing the akuma stupid enough to get too close to her.

The girl herself was quite tame and weak by comparison. It'd taken Tyki little effort to insinuate himself into her life in the brief time he'd been in Rome. Wisely had told him she thought herself quite the fierce thing, which was why she'd ignored all the warning signs her other half had given, believing herself capable enough to deflect anything Tyki were to dish out. The animal inside of her _must've_ been able to sense the threat he posed, but her more human half was too distracted by his good looks and obvious wealth to act upon those killer instincts.

That was why Tyki made sure to keep away from the girl when the wolf escaped; it couldn't help but attack him and protect its bearer. If he'd felt any inclination, Tyki could've long-since destroyed it, her pesky Innocence. The only reason why he and Wisely hadn't already was that they were waiting for exorcists to come and investigate the situation. It'd be a good chance to extract information about the pink-haired exorcist girl for the Earl.

That was the only reason why he kept up with the charade. _Well, that and the promise of earthly pleasures_, Tyki amended as the girl's hands slipped from around his neck to his chest, playing with the buttons of his coat before straying lower to the hem of his trousers.

Tyki looked at the young woman, who tilted her head towards his.

"Shouldn't we be getting inside first?" Tyki murmured quietly into her ear, sidestepping her searching lips. They were still standing in the street, and, although there weren't much people roaming about this late at night, Tyki knew their movements were going to lead to a course of action that wasn't exactly _appropriate_ for the public eye.

"Lead the way," she replied, her hooded eyes glowing with lust.

_I'll check out the trouble while you get sordid. _The mocking thought ghosted past the edges of his mind as Tyki unlocked the door to the inn and led the bait slide past him inside.

A slight frown creased his lovely face. _Hurry up and leave, Wisely_, he mentally projected. As if he wanted an audience? That last thought was accompanied by ghostly, sardonic laughter.

**O.O**

There was an awkward silence as the four of them stopped in front of an inn of a lesser, more salacious nature.

"The 'Teasing Pleasure'?" Kyoko coughed, her face turning a bright shade of red. A snort of amusement escaped Lavi's lips before he schooled his face into an appropriate expression of dissatisfaction.

"Er, yes," Michael replied, giving her a chagrined smile. "There seems to be some sort of preparation going on in town, which is why most of the inns and such were already booked by the time I heard of your imminent arrival. The three of you will be staying here for the duration of your mission. My apologies, Exorcist-sama."

"I guess there's no other way around it," Kyoko sighed, pushing up her glasses yet again. "We'll just have to make do."

"Sorry to say this, but… I was only able to secure one room."

"That's fine!" Lavi replied, grinning mischievously. "Kumo-chan and I can just share, can't we?" He wrapped his arms around said girl's slim waist.

"Uhn!" Kumori replied, youthfully oblivious to the danger the redhead posed to her purity. Kyoko sighed. Despite their differences at the moment, she wasn't going to let the lusty redheaded exorcist have his way with the adorably ignorant little girl.

Kyoko whacked Lavi in the head.

"What was that for?" Lavi whined, rubbing his head and glaring at her.

She narrowed his eyes threateningly at him. "For your boundless indecency, of course. Now, if I hear one more word out of you about doing _anything_ improper with her…"

"Okay, okay, got it, Kyoko-chan."

**.**

"Feelin' better, Kumo-chan?" Lavi asked, watching as Kumori wolfed down another platter of cold mutton stew. The inn keepers had been settling into bed by the time the exorcists had arrived and, not wanting to keep the grumpy couple up longer than necessary, had settled on a cold dinner for the night. The pink-haired pixie was unperturbed by this, though, and dug into the stew with great relish.

"Uhn!" Kumori replied, giving him a stuffed smile.

"That was… very strange." Michael admitted, pouring freshly-brewed coffee for the party.

"You could say that again," Kyoko murmured, rubbing her eyes. She thanked the Finder, gratefully taking her cup and taking a sip of the piping-hot brew.

"Nani? The ghost?" Kumori replied, her face pinching up. "I don't like her."

"I'd have to agree with you there, Kumori-san," Michael conceded, proffering her a cup of coffee. Kumori shook her head, motioning to her cup of milk. The Finder started as Pichoncho, who'd flopped onto the table, ripped through the fabric and creating an eerie, gapping leer on the black rabbit's face.

Michael watched as the rabbit plush then commenced to slurp up the coffee.

"Don't you think it strange, though?"

"What?" Lavi asked, turning to look at Kyoko.

"That we would meet a white-clad young girl—no, young_ woman_—roaming the streets of Rome alone and unattended while there's a murderous white wolf running around attacking people?"

"I was running around alone," Kumori responded, puckering her lips.

"Stop being contrary, Kumori," Kyoko sniffed. Said girl merely stuck her tongue out at the other, whose eyes tightened.

"You're right," Michael interrupted, drawing their attention to him and away from each other. "That _is_ somewhat strange."

"We shoulda tried to stop her from runnin' off like that," Lavi sighed, taking a long drought of his coffee.

"Gomen ne, Lavi, but that's sorta hard when you're on the floor," Kumori giggled, licking her spoon clean.

Kyoko frowned as the petite exorcist abruptly got to her feet and flounced to the door that led to the hallway. "Where are you going?"

"I need to go to the bathroom!" she petulantly replied, puffing her cheeks and pouting before flitting away. Kyoko stiffened when Lavi gave a long-suffering sigh.

"You two should _reaaally_ make up already."

"T-That's really none of your business, Usagi. It's strictly between me and Kumori. If she wants to be friends again so badly, she should apologize."

Lavi grimaced. "What happened?"

"Again, Lavi. That's strictly between me and Kumori."

"If you say so," Lavi muttered, turning instead to Michael. "What was with that funny look earlier?"

"Ah, that," the Finder replied, giving the ginger a small smile. "Nothing, really. I was just surprised."

"Surprised? By what?"

"Well, I don't know you quite as well as Allen-san did, obviously, or as Kyoko-san does, but I know enough to know that you usually wouldn't go for young ladies like Kumori-san." At this, Kyoko's interest piqued. The Usagi liked Kumori, then? She'd have to make sure to keep them apart…

Lavi grinned. "Heh, you're right there. But I couldn't seem to help it, especially when she—"

"Ahem!" Kyoko abruptly cut in as Kumori burst into the room. From the looks of it, she hadn't heard Lavi's comments, so all was well _there_, at least. Lavi gave her a grateful look, which she returned with a surreptitious nod. "So, Michael, when did you say the Wolf Princess usually makes her appearances?

"Ah, I never said, but she usually appears after nightfall. So far, none of the cases has occurred during the day."

"Which only makes the presence of the 'ghost' even more suspect and suspicious," Kyoko concluded, frowning slightly at Pichoncho as it finished up the last of her coffee.

"Well, since the Wolf Princess only comes out at night, why don't we all do some exploring?" Lavi suggested, eyes focused primarily on Kumori as he did.

"Would you all like to rest for a bit before heading out?"

"No, Michael. It'd be best if we all just set out now, when sleep hasn't gotten to us fully yet," Kyoko sighed, rubbing her eyes. How she wanted to just climb into a soft, warm bed already… Knowing Kumori though, the girl wouldn't wake up until it came time for another meal.

"We can all pair off."

"I'll take Kumo-chan!" The pink-haired exorcist giggled as Lavi wrapped her in an enormous bear hug.

"No," Kyoko snapped in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Yay, Michael-kun and I are partners!" Kumori cried, launching herself at the Finder. Michael's smile widened as Lavi's grin withered.

"That's no fair, Kyoko-chan," Lavi grumbled, eyeing the happy pair enviously.

Kyoko snorted. "We all know nothing's going to get done if it's just you and Kumori alone together."

The redhead petulantly pouted as lilting, childish laughter reached his ears.

**^w^**

Wisely exhaled, his breath fogging up the night air as the cold seeped into his body, despite the thick frock coat he was wearing. He'd been sitting on the roof of the Teasing Pleasure for more than half an hour, waiting for Tyki to finish up his little game and the exorcists to disperse. It'd be easier to take care of them one by one rather than as an entire group. He could just blast their brains, but that took the fun out of things.

He stood languidly as he noted a bright flash of pink burst forth from the doors of the disreputable inn.

The exorcists were finally making themselves useful, it seemed.

**.O**

Kumori hummed quietly to herself as she pranced down the dimly-lit street, her arms waving to and fro in the soft midnight breeze. Pichoncho loped quietly behind her alongside the Finder, who was smiling slightly as he watched the pink pixie frisking about.

"Ne, Michael-kun?"

"Yes, Kumori-san?"

"Do you think the ghost is the wolf princess?" Kumori asked, a slight frown puckering her face.

"It could be, possibly. We can't know for sure until we actually meet her, of course."

"I hope she isn't," Kumori admitted, absentmindedly rubbing at her cheek. "I don't like her—she's mean."

Michael smiled sympathetically. "I'd have to agree with you there, Kumori-san."

"Call me Kumo-chan, Michael-kun!" she smiled, extending an arm. Michael took hold of it slowly, and Kumori began swinging their joined hands back and forth between the two of them like a porch swing, the motion almost in sync with her slow skipping.

"Ne, Michael-kun, do you have any candy?"

He chuckled softly. "Yes, I do, actually. Would you like some?"

"Uhn!" She bounced around him on the balls of her feet before pouncing at the bright pink lollipop he extended towards her. Quickly unwrapping it, she popped it into her mouth, her face lighting up at the burst of cherry-flavored sweetness assailing her taste buds.

"Adigaro, Migael-guuun!" Kumori indistinctly enthused, giving the Finder an appreciative hug. He returned this with a warm "You're welcome" while slowly disengaging her arms. Lavi may not be there, but Michael still didn't want to get in the way of his love, even if it did seem somewhat one-sided at the moment.

He watched as the exorcist flounced on ahead of him, twirling the pink rabbit plush round and round and round—

Kumori turned slowly as the Finder slumped to the ground. She pouted disapprovingly at the finely-dressed figure that stepped out from the shadows of the alley they'd just passed.

"Ne, Peeper-sama, why'd you hafta go and hit him like that? That's so mean!"

_He'll live, and don't call me that_.

"You better not be lying," Kumori sniffed, puffing her cheeks and turning her face away. She tensed as she felt the strange heat from before stir within her tummy. She craned her head, trying to peek behind Wisely. Was Tyki here? "Is it just me and you playing this time then?"

_I have a headache, so you'll just have to play with her on your own_ was the belated reply. Kumori's brow knit in confusion. Who—?

Kumori gasped as darkness claimed her vision, and a bout of vertigo beset her mind. The last sense to leave her was her sense of touch, which was probably being tampered with too, because the last thing she thought she felt as oblivion claimed her was a warm pair of hands catching her as she fell.

**OxO**

**TADA~! No warm fluff (awww…) but maybe a cliffy? Doubt that would count, though… oh wells, I needa work on trying to make those happen.**

**Til next time.**


	13. Longed-for Reappearance

**CHAPTER 13**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWND DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**.**

Longed-for Reappearance

Kumori opened her eyes. Then she closed them and opened them again. The strange, flamboyant orbs remained suspended in the sky. After a moment, she realized the tangelo orb was the sun. The French rose orb was Pichoncho, but without the plush coat.

The pink-haired girl blinked as the golem gently perched atop her head.

"Where are we, Pichoncho?" Kumori asked, looking around. They were in a clearing of some sort, one with lots of pink and lavender wildflowers and cattails.

Said golem lifted its wings and took into the air, flying away, and, after a belated moment, Kumori got up and followed after. As the pink golem led her farther and farther into the woods, Kumori tilted her head in consternation. This place seemed very _familiar_, for some reason. Really similar to where she'd met—

"Kumori?"

Kumori froze as the hauntingly familiar voice called out to her from behind. Heart filled with dread, she slowly, haltingly turned around, amber eyes widening only slightly as she took in his familiar mane of bright red hair—like Lavi's—and amber eyes much like her own except for their clarity and depth.

Kumori nervously swallowed before daring to speak. "Hello, Nea-sama."

**.**

**Seems I accomplished my goal of shortening my chapters… this one aint even a page long!**


	14. Whispers of the Dead

**CHAPTER 14**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori, and… everyone who appears in Kumori's Road-induced dream, with the exception of the Noah).**

**O.O**

Whispers of the Dead

"You're not real."

"How's that?" With his head in her lap, Kumori smiled down at the red-haired man as she made him a small wreath of wildflowers and cattails similar to the one she'd just crowned herself with. Nearby, Pichoncho idly chased after small white butterflies.

"You can't be him, since Nea-sama's dead. Are you a ghost?"

"Do I feel like one?" To emphasize his words, the man languidly raised one hand and caressed her cheek. Kumori didn't reply, abandoning the half-finished crown of flowers in favor of playing with strands of his red hair. He didn't feel like a ghost, but since she didn't have much experience with them other than the ghost girl who wasn't really a ghost, she couldn't say for sure.

As if sensing Kumori's doubt, Nea gave her a lop-sided grin. "How about I prove it to you?"

"Uhn, okay!" she giggled, angling her head closer to his. "Gimme a kiss!"

The redhead responded by gently gripping the back of her head with his hand and placing a gentle kiss on her lips. Kumori allowed it for a second or two before pulling away, giving the man a bright, cheery smile.

"Are you done now? I don't want you wearing Nea-sama like that."

The redhead laughed and stood up, his amber eyes glinting with amusement and something else, some darker, uglier emotion. "I'm hurt, Kumori! That was so mean."

Kumori giggled, dancing a few steps away from him as she did. "If you were really Nea-sama, I'd feel bad. But you're not, so it's fine."

He gave a long-suffering sigh as Pichoncho flitted over and perched atop his outstretched hand. "Your manners have deteriorated badly in the time I've been gone, Kumori."

Narrowing her eyes at the impersonator, Kumori tilted her head at an angle, one raised finger absentmindedly probing her lips. "Who are you?"

"Why do you keep asking that? I've told you already, I'm—"

"Uhn, nope~!" Kumori giggled, stepping farther and farther away from the man in front of her. "You failed the test!"

"Test?"

"Nea-sama wouldn't have kissed me. That would've been too _improper_."

"Yes, you're right," the redhead agreed, giving her a conciliatory smile. "It would've been extremely improper for me to kiss you, since you're just a pet, a project I picked up along the way." The tall redhead grinned as the petite pink-haired girl's eyes darkened, her face flushing ever so slightly. "It's downright disturbing for people to take up with their pet dog, don't you think? This is the same."

Kumori pouted. "You're _mean_. I don't wanna play with you anymore," Kumori huffed, turning and flouncing away. As she drew farther away from the man and the golem and deeper into the heart of the woods, the familiar voice called out tauntingly to her from behind one last time.

"That's too bad, since I'm going to be your only friend, in the end."

Kumori whipped around to throw another retort at him, but when she did, there was no one to throw it at. The clearing was just that—clear. The only indication that anyone had been there at all was the half-finished crown of wildflowers, lying forlorn and forgotten amidst the sward. That and the tattered remains of several butterflies.

Kumori tensed as the bushes ahead of her rustled slightly. Had it been the wind…? She turned as if to go and then spun around when it rustled once more.

"Come out, come out, whoever you are~!" she demanded, hand flicking to her face. As the rustling grew more pronounced, Kumori bit a finger hard enough to draw blood. Then, raising one outstretched hand cautiously towards the undergrowth, she called out once more. "Don't make me come in there after you."

The pink-haired girl grinned as a dark shape separated itself from the bushes. The grin slowly wiped itself from her face as beams of sunlight fell on the figure, illuminating its features. Without a word, Kumori turned and ran.

**x**

Wisely frowned as his third eye watched the pink-haired girl sped through the dark, forest green landscape, dark humanoid shapes closing in on her from behind.

_Could you pick up the pace a little, Road?_ Already he could sense the other two exorcists, whom his unconscious friends were supposed to meet up half an hour ago. They'd begun their search quite some time ago and were closing in on Wisely and Road. Soon, they'd be upon them, and it wouldn't end well if they found him while his hands were still full with Kumori's limp body.

Wisely grimaced as childish laughter filled his mind and his ears. _If you're so scared of getting caught by the exorcists, why don't you just take her and hide somewhere?_ That wasn't a bad idea, actually.

_Let me have some fun, Wisely. I_ just_ got back, after all_. _Just hold onto your girlfriend for now_. His frown deepened at Road's teasing response.

Wisely felt inclined to reply that she was Tyki's—she _had_ been looking for him, after all, not paying him any mind—but he didn't want to admit that aloud. For some reason, it irked him, though he didn't quite know why.

_Just remember, the Earl wants her in one piece_, Wisely finally advised, sighing in exasperation and accession as he tried—without much success—to get up. He didn't undergo rigorous physical training like the other male Noah did—why should he, when he could just implode the brains of his enemies?—so it was no simple feat for him to heft both himself and Kumori up off the cobbles.

It was only with a hand from Road's corporeal form and a paw from Pichoncho—Kumori's rabbit plush golem—that Wisely was finally able to heave himself into an upright position, staggering slightly under the petite girl's weight. At Road's muffled snickers, Wisely flushed, and, with a huff of righteous indignation, skulked off in search of a comfortable hiding place nearby while Road duked it out with the exorcists.

Behind him, the pink rabbit plush loped quietly after.

**.O**

With ghostly laughter echoing in her ears, Kumori slipped through the brambles, not caring as the thorns bit deep into her skin. That was fine, as long as she got away from _it_.

Already she could hear it catching up to her. It wasn't alone, either. It'd been joined by several more as it'd chased her through the woods, the darkness not seeming to deter it or its companions the teensiest bit. The lack of light wasn't as much of a problem for her as it would've been for Lavi or Kyoko, since she had more heightened senses than normal humans did. Still, she'd hoped it would've done something about her followers.

She didn't know how much time had passed since the clearing, but already Kumori could feel her limbs tiring from the strain of dashing through the woods with little to protect her from the elements. For some reason, she couldn't activate her Innocence—no matter how much she tried, Dark Heart wouldn't respond to her commands. Dark Soul would've been really helpful right about now, with all the branches and rocks digging into her every chance they got.

Kumori squinted as a she spotted a bright—well, bright compared to the light in the woods, at least—patch of light ahead. Seeing an upturned tree root as well, she bunched her legs and jumped, gasping and letting out a squeal when the edge of her foot caught on part of the tree roots and she rolled head over heels down the side of a steep ravine.

Grunting as random bits of rock and tree jabbed repeatedly, relentlessly into her side, she tumbled down, down, down, whimpering when, with a jarring crash, she finally hit rock-bottom. Haltingly, she lifted herself into a kneeling position, convulsing in pain as her small movements rammed a spear of sharp pain into her abdomen. Gently running her left hand down her side—was her right broken?—Kumori gasped as she felt the edge of a long, thin metal rod of some sort, slick with her quickly congealing blood, lodged between two of her ribs, a few of which seemed broken.

Another whimper escaped her lips as Kumori fell onto her back, panting from the exertion. With wet, shallow breaths—had one of her ribs punctured her lung?—she screwed her eyes shut and tried to tear the rod from her body. A muffled shriek sounded as her fingers slid off the slippery surface, extracting only a short length of the stick. She bit her lip and, with one quick, sharp movement, tore the rest of the offending stick from her side. Despite her attempts not to, another strangled scream ripped itself from her, and Kumori collapsed onto the ground, violently shaking and fighting the urge to scream herself hoarse.

With a breathy, ragged sigh, she stared up at the sky, which was now a deep, dark blue with cold, bright pinpricks of white as the stars winked at her in fits and bursts of delirium. In a moment of dazed confusion, Kumori wondered why the moon was so blurry. It wasn't until she felt the salty wet water droplets on her face that she realized it was her tears that was causing the world to go hazy.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a pebble landed on her face, and Kumori flinched as black silhouettes swarmed down the sides of the ravine.

The wind blew through, bringing with it a melancholy tune, a song whose words were just at the edge of consciousness.

Heart shivering, pounding out a mad, demented tune that only she could hear, Kumori breathed a thin, ragged breath, drawing in the stench of death as the dark shapes scuttling closer.

Dread filled her as she realized that what she'd mistaken for the whistling of the wind had, in fact, been the whispers of the dead.

**o**

**Cliffy here (?), so yay~!**

**Hm. Do I seem to have Kumori kissing only redheads, nothing else? Not like **_**that's**_** gonna last forever though, so… *sigh* enjoy it while it lasts.**

**Til next time! Reviews much-appreciated, yah.**


	15. Dark Sentinels

**CHAPTER 15**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko, all Road-induced-individuals-that-won't-be-reappearing-ever-again, plus the young-woman-with-no-name-that-hasn't-made-a-reappearance-yet-since-her-whore-scene-but-will-be-coming-up-in-a-few-more-chapters).**

**.**

Dark Sentinels

Worry gnawed at Lavi like a starving wolf at a bone as he made his way through the dark streets of Rome.

Kumori and Michael had been missing for more than an hour now. Maybe he was overreacting, but Lavi's gut told him otherwise. His little pixie was in _danger_.

As if sensing his thoughts, Kyoko turned to give him what she must've thought to be a reassuring smile. "Maybe Kumori just got distracted by a candy shop of some sort. I'm sure they're fine."

A voice mockingly called out to them from the encroaching darkness to contradict what the black-haired girl had said. "I wouldn't be so sure of that if I were you."

**O.O**

Sentinels of pain and grief from her past, they loomed above her, deep and endless shadows that stretched on for eternity, relentless and unforgiving. Kumori cringed as she realized that it was hers, _her_ name that they offered up to the nightfall of darkness.

The volume of the whispers increased, reaching a hushed culmination as, painfully, Kumori tried to prop herself onto her elbows, tried to crawl away. She had to get away, she had to…

"K…o-nee-chan!"

…Too late.

Kumori froze. Fearfully, she slowly, haltingly turned and looked over her shoulder at the speaker.

"Triksa…?" A boy of ten with curly black locks and empty brown eyes grinned down at her.

"That was one nasty fall there. Did it feel like getting stoned, do you think?" Pretending as if she hadn't heard or seen him, Kumori shakily started crawling away, though this time at a much faster pace. She was forced to stop when a small child of six or seven, with chin-length brown hair and almond-shaped brown eyes, excitedly bound over and bent down onto her knees to stare at the pink-haired girl, who recoiled, wincing minutely as the movement jarred her broken arm and torn ribcage.

"K…o-nee-chan, what's wrong?" the girl asked, face scrunching up in mild concern as Kumori recommenced crawling. "Why're you running away?"

"I'm not… running, Mira, I'm—_crawling_." Kumori's amber eyes tightened along with her heart as a pair of feet appeared at the edge of her line of sight.

"Do you need help?" a masculine voice politely inquired. A pair of hands added themselves to the feet, as did a face. Its features—fair blond hair and pale blue eyes—was only one of many that Kumori had memorized.

"Go _away_, Edward," Kumori snarled, her chest and arm blazing with pain. Grimacing as a pair of weathered boots plodded closer to her, Kumori hissed and gritted her teeth when a dirty, bare foot shot out and slammed onto her unbroken hand. Another familiar face came into view.

"Hah, nice to know you're still a little _bitch_, K..o-chan." The young brown-haired boy with bright green eyes smirked at her, giving her hand an especially wicked twist. The nasty grin on the boy's face widened as Kumori's face contorted with silent pain.

"Stop, Robin," Mira whined, pulling on his hand. "Everyone else gets a turn too, remember?"

Kumori screamed as something sharp and pointed rammed into her body, forcing her into the ground.

"How does it feel, K…o-chan?" Edward asked, bending to tenderly caress her cheek. "Like being stabbed to death repeatedly with a sword, right?"

"Really, Edward?" Kumori's eyes widened as a slender, pretty young woman with long blond tresses falling below her waist walk up and wrap a slender arm through the crook of the younger blond man's elbow. "I'd be surprised if she didn't drown in her own blood first." As if to accentuate her statement, Kumori's body convulsed, and her chest was wracked with another bout of pain, one which resulted in a wet, phlegmy fit of coughing. Spitting the mixture out of her mouth, Kumori stared as bloody spittle dripped from her lips to the ground.

"Say, K…o-chan, I have a question." Kumori looked up as the pretty woman bent down and stared at her with morbid curiosity. "I get that you're a monster, but you must still feel pain, right? So how does it feel, to die at the hands of friends?" This comment was followed by another spear of pain, another scream of agony.

"I can tell you, it hurt like a _bitch_," Robin sneered.

"Especially when she started _eating_ me," Mira giggled, twirling around and around Kumori and the other specters.

"See? Right there," the blond pointed out, turning to give Kumori a disapproving look. "Humans don't kill their friends, and they _especially_ don't eat them."

"But what can you expect from a monster, Evelyn?" Edward sighed, shrugging his shoulders apologetically to the others. "Humans are just _food_ to them, nothing more."

A faint whimper escaped the pink-haired girl as she clutched at her chest, which was now throbbing from more than just physical wounds. She raised bright, tear-filled eyes to her onlookers. "N-No, that's not—"

"Look!" Mira gaped, pointing. "It knows how to _cry_ like we do!"

"Wrong, Mira," Evelyn cooed, patting the girl on the head. "It's only a ruse, one meant to draw _real_ humans closer, to make them easier prey." The blond turned and gave Kumori a venomous smile. "They don't have the full capacity to understand human emotions, only to imitate them. That thing there is as capable of real human emotion as much as an ax or hammer. It's just an unfeeling _tool_, which is what _all_ akuma are."

"You're wrong!" Kumori shrieked, broken bones grinding against one another as she struggled to her feet once more. "I-I have feelings, _real_ ones! Because I'm _human_, just like you! I-I'm not a monster, not an _akuma_—!"

"Then what are those?" The question rang out pure and true, from the lilting mouth of an innocent child. Kumori turned and did a double-take. Standing in front of her was a small, scrawny pixie of a girl, with once-shiny pink hair dulled by years of dirt and grime. Her eyes were clear and bright, though, earnest—as if they knew the secrets of the world and were greatly saddened by it.

"W-What're you talking about?"

The girl raised one grubby hand and pointed to Kumori's abdomen. "Those metal sticks."

Fearfully, Kumori looked down at her body. Her eyes widened in horror when she realized that what she'd thought were metal rods breaking _into_ her body were really metallic bones breaking _out_.

With a mounting sense of dread and aggravation, Lavi turned in the direction of the speaker. He wasn't surprised to see Road Kamelot emerge from the shadows. He _was_ surprised when Michael did as well.

"Michael?" Kyoko asked, surprise and uncertainty etched onto her face. "What're you…?"

"What've you done to Kumori, Road?"

"Ah, as mean as ever, Lavi," Road airily replied, giving the Junior Bookman a teasing grin. "Don't you care at all about your friend Michael?" she asked, raising one slender hand to caress the Finder's face. At Lavi's hard glare, she smirked, dropping her hand. "Guess not. It's all Kumori, Kumori, Kumori these days. I must've missed something important when I was gone. So, what's so special about her, Lavi?"

"Maybe I'll tell you, once Michael and Kumori are safe."

"That'd be no fun, though!"

"So you must be the illustrious Road Kamelot," Kyoko commented, understanding at last flashing in her blue eyes. "I would say it is a pleasure to have finally made your acquaintance, but it really isn't."

"That's fine by me," Road replied, a pink lollipop appearing in her hands with a flick of her wrist. "It's easier to kill people I don't like."

**p**

Sudden silence engulfed the ravine, the whispering that had been a steady undercurrent throughout the encounter abruptly ceasing.

Kumori swallowed as another humanoid form detached itself from the shifting mass. This one seemed oddly familiar, for some reason. A slant of moonbeam fell across its face, and Kumori started. She'd seen this person before, hadn't she, in a strange, half-forgotten dream?

Kumori took slow, fearful steps back, away from the strange woman, who bared her teeth at her in the parody of a smile, and the pink-haired girl stumbled to the ground, landing on her broken arm. She uttered not a sound, though, instead saving her breath for a scream of terror.

The woman's body wasn't as hideous and broken as it had been in the dream. It was worse.

**This is where I would describe the woman's mangled body, but… have yall seen "Umineko na Koro ni"? If you have, then this is the part like those scenes in the anime where the gory graphics of the corpses are blurred out because they'd be too traumatizing and horrific for viewers. Well, likewise…**

"W-Who are you?" Kumori gaped, choking back the bile welling up in the back of her throat.

The woman quirked her broken neck at an even more disturbing angle. "K…o, how can you not recognize your own mother?"

Kumori's breath hitched. Mother?

"I-I don't…"

"Ah, that's right, you wouldn't remember me," the woman rasped, a steady stream of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. "You _did_ kill me, after all. Ripped yourself out of my stomach, you did."

The woman cast a disparaging eye at the more notable specters before turning to look at Kumori with her dead, empty eyes. "If they're bothering you, dear, why don't you just kill them like you did before? It'd be easy, especially for a monster like you."

"I-I, I didn't—"

"Of course you did, dear!" the woman interrupted, producing a harsh laugh that grated on Kumori's ears. "You may not have done it directly on some, but everyone here died because of you. _You_ killed us, K..o dear. You and that monster inside of you."

"Y-You're wrong…"

"Am I? What do you think that is, then?" she crowed, pointing to the thing trying to rip its way out of Kumori's torso.

"You're wrong!" Kumori insisted, shaking her head furiously to and fro. "T-Those are lies! You're a liar!"

"Who's the one lying here, deary—me or you?!" The woman leered as Kumori screamed, her body arcing into the air as she struggled for breath, emitting strangled cries as more metal bones ripped their way from her body. Finally, with one last tug, a metal skeleton burst forth from her chest.

"How does it feel, K..o dear?" the woman cackled, defying the natural laws of the world by raising her immensely twisted, deformed arms into the air. "How does it feel to finally let the world see you in your true form?"

"W-What are you—?" Kumori raised one hand to wipe her face and abruptly stopped to stare when she saw a coppery metal claw instead of a grubby white hand. She shrieked when she realized the foreign claw was _hers_.

"W-Why… _Why am I like this?!_" Kumori shrieked, cowering into herself to make herself smaller, raising her revolting hands to cover the shard of Dark Matter embedded in the forehead of her skull.

"What are you saying? You've always been like this, K…o dear."

Anger boiled up within her. Why was the woman—her _mother_—so keen on making her suffer? "Usse," she hissed.

"Under that human skin you wore, you were nothing but an akuma, a toy made by the Earl. You didn't actually think you were _human_, did you?"

"_Usse_," Kumori spat through gritted teeth, the demand coming out guttural, almost unintelligible. Not nearly as human as she'd wanted.

"Oh, this is interesting! This little monster actually fooled herself into thinking she was a _human!_" The woman—her _mother_—cackled again, striding over and lifting her body—her _human _body—up off the ground and thrusting it into Kumori's skull face. "Feeling exposed, K..o dear? Why don't you put on your skin again?"

"_USSE!_" Kumori screamed, leaping forward and swinging her metal claws at the woman. There was a loud, wet crunch as her hands made contact, and with a sickening lurch, the woman fell to the ground.

**.O**

"Take care of Michael, will you?" Lavi ordered, brandishing his small hammer.

"Right," Kyoko replied, slipping a mirror out of her pack. This was for the best, really. She wasn't much of a fighter, and truthfully, she didn't much care for facing up against one of the most notorious of the Noah.

"Ah, so it's you and me, Lavi?" Road smirked, taking a slow lick of her lollipop. "That means we can finish up our game."

Lavi gave her a grim smile. "People say I'm not the best playmate."

"That's fine. Neither am I."

Kyoko blinked, and suddenly, with a shout of "Ozuchi, Kozuchi, man, man, MAN," Lavi was throwing himself at the female Noah. Kyoko turned around and quickly threw up her arm when she realized Michael was practically on top of her. She grimaced as the Finder began pummeling her with his arms.

The black-haired exorcist gasped as the Finder swept her feet off the ground. Falling to the ground with a thud, she found herself panting for breath when Michael climbed on top of her chest and wrapped his hands around her neck, slowly tightening his fingers and constricting her air pipe.

Far off, she could hear Lavi cry out to her in alarm.

As her vision tunneled, Kyoko had a sudden idea, and, fingers desperately groping along her side, relief engulfing her when she wrapped trembling fingers around a small, circular object.

Lavi turned around in the middle of his fight in time to see both exorcist and Finder disappear.

**.**

"Gomen ne, gomen ne, _gomen ne_…" Kumori whispered, over and over, hovering close to the body of the woman—her mother.

She let out a bloodcurdling screech as the woman began cackling uproariously, her body jerking wildly up onto its feet, as if pulled by some unseen puppeteer's strings.

"That's right, that's right!" the woman shrieked, clapping her twisted, broken hands together. "Kill me, kill us _all_, just like the monster you are, the one you were always meant to be."

Kumori started as, unbidden her skeletal arms raised themselves. "D-Dame…" She began furiously pulling at the invisible force dragging her as her feet dragged her to the other specters. "I, I-I don't _wanna_…" Mira stared up at her with forlorn brown eyes.

"Y-Yada," Kumori begged, pulling against it, against her body. She began shaking her head when her arm raised itself without her command. Evelyn gave her a knowing, disappointed look before hugging Mira closer to her. "Dame, dame, _dame…!_"

Kumori's hand shot out…

… and time slowed to crystalline clarity.

She watched in silent horror, each detail embedding itself into her mind, as her skeletal claw connected with Mira's head.

**T.T**

Kyoko gasped as, suddenly, the ground disappeared beneath them. She grunted as they landed, Michael falling atop of her into the white haven of the Glass Sanctuary.

Panting for breath, Kyoko rushed to her feet and, with a great big leap, bounded over to Michael and gave him a solid uppercut to the chin. She slowly exhaled as he fell backwards, senseless. Maybe she'd used too much force.

"Sorry about that, Michael," Kyoko muttered. She hadn't wanted to, but this was for the best. Keeping Michael locked up here would keep him safe—both from the Noah and them.

Turning away from the Finder's prone form, Kyoko looked at the portal, which had lowered itself level to her waist. She hesitated only for a moment before ghosting through, landing on the other side with a light step.

She started when she saw Lavi and Road still duking it out, with the red-haired exorcist on the losing end of the battle.

**x**

Damedamedamedamedamedame_dame_…

The mental litany went on and on in her head as what ensued blurred together into a bloody haze. Kumori didn't know what exactly happened—she didn't _want_ to know exactly happened—but she realized everything was over when the ravine was utterly silent.

Kumori closed her eyes—she didn't want to see any of… _it_—and slid to the ground. Slowly, she began rocking herself back and forth on the balls of her toes, the motion gaining momentum as the reality of what she'd just done—again—began to set in.

She didn't know how long she sat there in a miasma of despair, but her silent reverie was broken by the sound of sliding rocks, alerting her to the presence of some other person. A pair of footsteps came into view, disrupting her bout of self-loathing.

Trying to ignore it, Kumori sat there a few moments more before the heat from their stare became unbearable.

"What do you want?" she whispered hoarsely, finally looking up. The pink-haired girl from before stared down at her with sorrowful eyes.

The girl tilted her head. "Does it hurt?" The question was accompanied by a gesture, one slender hand raised to her chest to emphasize the point. At Kumori's silence, she continued. "I can make it go away, if you want. The pain. Do you want that?"

**O.O**

Readjusting her glasses, Kyoko pulled her gun from its holster, releasing the safety. She cocked the gun and raised it, gazing down its barrel to get a decent shot of Road. It may not have been Innocence, but a bullet to the head would still deter a Noah, if only for a second.

Anything could happen in a second, though.

**.**

"Uhn…"

**.**

Wisely straightened up as the pink-haired girl stirred in his arms stirred. He watched in wary curiosity as she sat up, staring dully at the surroundings before turning her amber eyes on him. His eyes narrowed slightly when she stood up and merely stood there staring at him with her oddly blank, empty eyes.

"Who are you?" Wisely ogled as she curtsied and gave him a limpid twitch of the lips that she must've thought would pass for a smile, though that was difficult to say, since her mind was as blank to him, though no filigrees of dark shadows were present as before with Kumori.

"Ah, where are my manners," she murmured, exhaling. Wisely blinked again. He'd been expecting more childish lilting, but her voice had taken on the deeper, richer tone it had affected back in Fierre, as well as the more formal intonations.

He stiffened slightly as the girl gave him another empty smile. "Forgive me for not immediately introducing myself, Lord Wisely. My name is Kiyoko."

**.**

**Did you know, Chapter 14 & 15 was actually Chapter 11? It got a different numbering after I split the chapters and stuff. Makes me feel more accomplished, having more numbered chapters than before, which is ridiculous, seeing as it's the same material.**


	16. Shadow of a Pure Child

**CHAPTER 16**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori, and Kiyoko)!**

**v**

Shadow of a Pure Child

The shot rang out, deafening in the still night. Lavi quickly backed away as the purple-haired Noah toppled over from the momentum of the bullet, which had nailed her in the chest.

"Come on, Lavi!" Kyoko snapped, cocking her gun. "We need to hurry up and find—!"

They were stopped by a cold, lilting voice. "That's _cheating_, that is."

Kyoko whirled around. Wasn't that—?

"Kumori!" Lavi shouted in relief. As said girl stepped out of the shadows, Kyoko frowned. Kumori's typically animated face was oddly blank and free of emotion, and her usual loose caper had been replaced with a reserved, carefully controlled gait.

The black-haired exorcist's frown deepened when the white-haired Noah from the previous mission nonchalantly walked out of the darkness alongside the Black Order's personal pixie.

"Kumo-chan, are you alright?" The pink-haired girl responded only by tilting her head, looking at the redhead as if he were some strange, unpleasant specimen that had turned up but nevertheless needed the proper application of attention.

"You must be Lavi, the Junior Bookman." She then turned to look at Kyoko. "And you—you're Kyoko Kawasaki."

"What're you going on about, Kumori?"

"Ah, forgive me. I seem to have forgotten myself, once again," the girl replied. She curtseyed—how she managed that without a skirt was beyond Kyoko—and gave them a smile, this one much colder than the ones Kumori usually displayed. "My name is Kiyoko."

"Stop messing around, Kumori!" Lavi barked, extending a hand out to her. "Hurry, we need to leave before Road recovers."

"Too late for _that_," a voice remarked. Kyoko's eyes tightened as the short female Noah stood up, a great red blossom of blood on the breast of her white dress, which was far more revealing than any that Kumori had worn so far.

"Good evening, Lady Road. I take it you're physically fine?"

"Yeah, Kiyoko. Thanks for asking," she added, pointedly glaring at the white-haired Noah. He merely rolled his eyes and walked a short distance away from them all and sat himself down into a more comfortable position in the doorstep of some not-too-shabby hovel.

"Road, what did you do to her?" Lavi shouted, directing a glare at the purple-haired girl. He turned to the pink-haired one by her side. "Snap out of it, Kumori!"

"Would you like me to take care of them, Lady Road?" she asked, ignoring the redhead's outburst.

Road smirked. "Sure! Go for it." Without further ado, the pink-haired girl launched herself at the exorcists.

"Kumori—!" Lavi grit his teeth as she landed a solid blow to his stomach.

"It seems I've yet to make myself clear," she murmured, her cold amber eyes narrowing ever-so-slightly. "I dislike having to repeat myself, human, so take careful note of this—my name is not Kumori, but Kiyoko."

"Lavi!" Kyoko ran over and helped the redhead back up to his feet. "Stop blindly attacking people! We need to come up with some sort of strategy first."

"S-She's the one who attacked _me_," he muttered, fingering his bruised side.

"Why does she keep calling herself 'Kyoko'?" the black-haired girl asked, watching as the pink-haired girl who was definitely _not_ Kumori slowly advanced, face a blank.

"Not 'Kyoko', Kyoko. 'Kyoko' is K-Y-O-K-O. She said 'Kiyoko', which is K-I-Y-O-K-O," Lavi corrected.

"What's the difference?" It was at times like this that she wished her education hadn't been cut off so shortly.

"In Japanese, 'Kyoko' means 'mirror' while 'Kiyoko' means 'pure child'. 'Kumori' means 'shadow'… is that supposed to have some sort of significance, _Kiyoko?_"

"You guess correctly."

Kyoko eyes flashed in dawning understanding. "Do you mean to say that Kumori is… _impure_ compared to you?"

"Yes. Unlike my other self, my judgment is not clouded by human emotion and weakness. The fetters of humanity do not affect me as they do her, thus am I free of the impurities which plague her."

"So 'Kumori' is your 'shadow'?"

"Yes," Kiyoko acceded, giving the exorcists a miniscule smile. "Like a shadow cannot exist without a form to give it substance and reality, Kumori cannot be if I were to disappear." She paused a moment to let the comment sink in. "That girl the two of you so obviously care for is nothing without me. I advise you to keep that thought in mind as we fight." Stripping one hand of its constricting white glove, Kiyoko raised one hand to her lips and bit the tip of one finger. Blood, thick and dark, beaded on the top of her pale white skin before gravity took hold and the drop slipped down the side of her finger.

Kiyoko breathed out a command just as the small droplet splashed against the cobbles. "Activate, Dark Heart." The dark shadows around them surged forth.

**.O**

"What did I tell you?" The metal skeleton looked up at as a tall redhead stalked towards her. She turned away. She didn't know him.

He kept on with his monologue, though. "In the end, there's no one left but you, me. Your only friend."

"I don't have any nakamae," she whispered disconsolately, wrapping her skeletal arms closer to her rib cage.

The Noah raised an eyebrow. "Then what are these?" he asked, gesturing to the sea of corpses surrounding them. The red-haired man laughed quietly to himself when she merely sighed and hunched in closer to herself. "Come, join me for a feast."

She shook her head, and the smile on his face narrowed into a thin slit. "I wasn't _asking_ you, now was I?" At the skeleton's further resistance, he sighed and gave her an impatient smile. "I didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice." Quicker than the human eye could follow—but not so quick that her akuma-eyes could not—he reached over and grabbed her by the crown of her skull and forced her face into the ground, embedding it deeper and deeper into the mush of mud and human flesh. "What have I told you about wasting food? You'd best finish everything—and I mean _everything_—else I'll have to punish you. And you don't like my punishments, now do you?"

She struggled for a bit, thrusting her bony chin out of the broken bones and shredded flesh, but some of it still ended up inside her skeletal jaw.

Unlike his greeting, the red-haired man's actions did elicit some emotions from her. Anger shot through her, hot and heady, sending a great rush of energy through her bones.

"Dame…"

"What did you say?" he absentmindedly asked, not really thinking she'd continue with her mild resistance.

"_Dame_," she whined once again, swatting at his hands in her hair.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear you."

"_DAME!_" she snarled, throwing out one skeletal arm at her oppressor. She was rewarded with the wet sound of flesh rending and a small pained inhalation.

"Oh, you shouldn't have done that," he murmured, rubbing at the scarlet tear on his right cheek. The skeletal frame rattled in fear as a strangely-familiar sadistic grin slid across the red-haired man's face.

**^O^**

"Dark Linkage." A small, grim smile alighted on Kiyoko's face as the shadows around her extended dark, filmy tendrils out into the dark night and grew, billowing out towards Lavi and Kyoko with dark, malevolent intent.

With grim resolution, Kyoko cocked her gun, releasing the safety.

"What're you doin', Kyoko?" Lavi snapped, standing protectively between the two girls.

"What does it look like, Lavi?" Kyoko retorted, brusquely trying—and failing—to shove the redhead out of her way. "We need to stop her, snap her out of whatever spell the Noah have put her under. We can't do that if she beats us to a bloody _pulp_."

"I've been in a situation similar to this before, Kyoko. Doin' anythin' from out here won't help. The only way for Kumori to wake up is to defeat Road within the dream."

"Well, I'm not going to just stand here and let her _beat_ me half to death," Kyoko snapped, side-stepping the redhead and prepping her gun. Reluctantly, Lavi turned around to face Kiyoko, who was considering them with mild, detached interest.

"Are you two done talking, now? Lord Wisely seems tired, and I would rather he have a more comfortable abode to rest on." Said Noah was indeed hunched over on the doorsteps of a store some distance away, seemingly unconscious, though how that'd happened was a mystery to Lavi, since the white-haired Noah hadn't even fought anyone.

"Say, Kiyoko, hurry it up a little, won't you?" Road petulantly demanded, chomping down hard onto her lollipop. "We aren't leaving til you get rid of both of them, and I'm running out of candy."

"My apologies, Lady Road. Feel free to take some from the rabbit pouch." Shutting her eyes, Kiyoko lifted her arms from her sides. "Dark Falls." With a sinister rustling, the shadows around them shot skywards, creating a great dark curtain that rose up, higher and higher until it enclosed the exorcists and Noah in an impenetrable dome.

"Now then," the pink-haired girl murmured, letting her hands fall by her sides, "let us begin our bout."

**O.O**

"D-Dame!"

The Noah shook his head and clucked. "I'm the one giving out the orders, and what I want is for you to climb back into that human shelf of yours."

She shook her aching head, the Noah's command ringing and reverberating through her mind, addling it.

"Why…?" Why were her limbs shakily trying to follow through with his orders?

"You're an akuma," the redhead airily declared, staring down at her with scorn in his beautiful eyes. "Those exercises of yours? Just a parlor trick, something I did to entertain myself. You didn't really think you would be able to _defy_ us, did you?"

"U-Usse," the skeleton whimpered, her entire being shaking from the pain that seemed to emanate from her very core. "W-Why dontcha j-just…" She keeled over and crawled slowly, painstakingly closer to her human shell. "Just…"

"'Just' what?" the Noah taunted, kicking the skeleton over. It landed atop the corpse with a muffled _oomph_. "You mean die? I already _did_ that, no thanks to _you_." The last word was emphasized by another kick, another muffled cry.

He laughed and clapped theatrically as, with a disturbing squelch, the metal skeleton crawled back in through the pink-haired corpse's chest cavity, the human shell bursting forth into sudden life.

**OvO**

"Come on, Kumori! You're in there, right? So come help out your _nakamae_ already!"

"I _would_ advise you to stop wasting your breath," Kiyoko murmured, lightly dancing out of the fiery path of Lavi's hammer, "since Kumori can't hear you, but it would be more advantageous for me if you continued."

"Does it look like I care at the moment?" Kyoko snapped, reloading her gun. "She's bound to hear _something_ eventually!"

"I highly doubt that." Lavi ground his teeth together in irritation. He never thought he'd be thinking this, but he hated Kumori right now. Well, Kiyoko, but still—she was a part of his little pixie. Kumori's other self was so annoying though, with her deadpan, matter-of-fact way of talking. Not like her usual adorably childish self.

The redhead watched in wary confusion as, in the midst of attack, the pink-haired girl slowed to a stand-still and rose several dozen feet into the air on shadowy tendrils of darkness. She languidly closed her eyes and raised her still-bleeding hand. "Cardinal Castigation." A dark droplet fell, and soon a steady stream followed after, congealing in the air into a thick red-black blade of blood.

"Lavi, don't let that touch you!"

He turned to his black-haired friend. "Why? It's just blood."

"Lavi, trust me—you _don't_ want that touching you."

"You should tell me why, Kyoko," he drawled, watching as the blade hovering in the air slowly rotated until it was pointing right at him, "else I'm going to go touch it and find out."

Kyoko bit her lip, some internal conflict going on before she finally, reluctantly replied. "Remember, Lavi, you asked for it, not me." She inhaled, gathering strength for the part that came next. "Kumori, she's… half akuma."

**.**

**I originally wasn't going to have it come out that way, but then I ran out of ideas and was like… whatever.**

**Til next time, yalls.**


	17. Death of Innocence

**CHAPTER 17**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kiyoko, Kyoko, and… the young woman, who is finally making another [final] appearance—you've been warned; expect a character death).**

**O.O**

Death of Innocence

"You gotta be_ jokin'_." But a memory resurfaced alongside that denial, one of him and Kumori in the dark halls of the Order. _"But what if I was some kind of monster, or an akuma…?"_ He now saw that question as the admission it'd been. He frowned. No wonder she hadn't wanted him touching her after the mission, when she was bloody and battered. She could've gotten him infected with the akuma blood virus.

"That is no joke." Lavi turned to glare at Kumori's other self. "Of course, if you feel like testing it out, feel free to run yourself through on my blade."

"Not likely," he smirked, hefting his hammer into the air.

"What're you doing, Lavi?"

The redhead ignored her question, instead saying "We're gonna have a good _long_ talk after this, Kyoko." Without a second glance at his companion, Lavi threw himself at Kiyoko with renewed gusto and a shout. "Hi Ban: Gouka Kaijin!" A torrent of flames erupted from his hammer and engulfed Kiyoko. The searing heat was quickly deflected with a dark gust of wind, and Lavi frowned as Kiyoko emerged from the fiery depths of his seal unharmed and unscathed.

"Innocence will not work on me, Junior Bookman," Kiyoko intoned, glaring imperiously at him as she raised another newly-formed blade. Her body rocked back in the air as the night was rent with the sound of bullets.

"How about mundane weapons then, you imposter?" Kyoko snapped, a light tinkling sound echoing as the clips fell to the cobbles. She reloaded her gun as the pink-haired girl whipped her head back to face her.

"You should know that man-made weapons are futile against both Innocence and Dark Matter," Kiyoko murmured, not wincing in the slightest as shadows ripped into her body and removed the bullets.

"It'll slow you down though, won't it?" Kyoko muttered, pushing up her glasses with firm hands.

"Not in the slightest." Kyoko swore as a dark blade hurtled towards her, smashing into the cobbles in an explosion of inky darkness and congealed blood. She hissed as a splatter nearly hit her. Even if the missiles didn't hit, their aftermath might. She looked up at the pink-haired girl as Lavi's fire dragon swirled around in the air, as effective against the akuma half-breed as Kyoko's gun.

The black-haired girl stumbled as someone knocked into her from the side, gaping as another blade shattered across the cobblestones where she had stood just moments before.

"Thank you, La—" Kyoko stopped when she saw not the redheaded exorcist but the white ghost from before, the one that had slapped Kumori. She sneered down at Kyoko.

"I see your little friend has gone out of control. I'll gladly take her out for you."

"No, you—!" Kyoko swore as the young woman in white dashed at Kiyoko, who merely tilted her head at the newcomer.

"You… you're the Innocence we've been looking for."

"Innocence? What're you talking about?" she scoffed, sneering at Kiyoko, who ignored her and turned to look into the shadows at the end of the street.

"Lord Tyki, would you like for me to retrieve the Innocence? It will be an easier task than the elimination of the two exorcists, I assure you."

A sliver of doubt crossed the young woman's face. "You—how do you know Tyki?" She whirled around as the tall Portuguese man stepped into the fiery light created by Lavi's still-active fire seal. "What's your relationship with the twerp, Tyki?"

"I've dirtied myself enough with her, so once I take the Innocence, you can have her."

"Dirtied—? You _bastard_." She whirled around to glare at Kyoko. "You and the redhead are in on this too, aren't you?"

"What? Don't be ridicu—" Kyoko swore—she was doing a lot of that tonight, it seemed—when the woman leaped at her, morphing into an enormous white wolf mid-leap. She barely missed being crushed to death as it was knocked aside by Lavi's hammer.

The wolf snapped its head to and fro to shake of its dizziness and then bunched its muscled legs, a monstrous snarl erupting from its frothing lips. Just as it was about to pounce, however, its snarl transformed into squelching cough. The wolf looked down at its body in confusion, wondering at why its limbs were suddenly reverting back to their human visage. In a matter of seconds, the snarling wolf was reduced to a panting woman.

"W-What…?" Her eyes, as well as those of Kyoko and Lavi, widened when Tyki surged up from the ground below the woman in white, a shard of iridescent green Innocence clasped in one hand.

"Thanks for the gift, dear," Tyki smirked and, with a flick of his wrist, destroyed the shard of Innocence.

The woman shot to her feet. "Y-You—!" She toppled forward as Kiyoko lashed her limbs tightly together with shackles of darkness.

"Kiyoko, don't—!" Lavi's words were cut short as more filmy veins of darkness suddenly wrapped themselves around the two exorcists, who were jerkily pulled upright into the air like puppets on strings manned by an amateur puppeteer.

"It seems your well of usefulness to Lord Tyki has run dry," Kiyoko murmured drily, raising one hand. The young woman hissed as the tendril of darkness encircling her neck shifted and tightened, drawing blood as it cut into her flesh. "Did you really think that someone of Lord Tyki's stature would stoop to mingling in the company of the likes of _you_ unless he had something he planned to _take?_"

"S-Shut it, you stupid little—" The rest of her retort was cut off by a cry of pain as she was lifted off the cobbles and rammed back down onto her back.

"I can see why my other self found you so… irritating," Kiyoko murmured, nodding to herself. "You seem to have a stronger inclination than most humans to debase others and slander those you fear are better than yourself. Unlike my other self, though, this is not personal—I am merely doing what is my duty."

The sword of congealed akuma blood oil hovered in the air above the woman's chest, increasing its height to gain more force on the downward pull.

"Farewell."

**OxO**

**Ugh, writing this arc or whatever was mainly a big BORE for me, since it's mainly just preparations for what comes AFTER. I **_**really**_** wanted to just skip STRAIGHT to the part I've been wanting to write for a while now, but then if I **_**did**_**… Ugh. But… this mission is ALMOST DONE! Soon we'll be onto the more **_**interesting**_** bits~!**

**Sorry, guys. I'm bad at fight scenes, which is why they're sorta… lacking. Also why I ended it there (yes, there's no additional fight scene after this for this mission). Though I can say I aint sorry what's-her-face died. Sad, I never even bothered naming her. I didn't like her, though. But that's probably because, like Road said, it's easier to kill people you don't like. Probably also why I didn't name her. It's stupid to name something and get all attached to it when you know you're gonna kill it later. But yeah, the future fight scenes are **_**probably**_** not gonna be that in depth.**

**Hm. I think I made Tyki sound different from how he did in the first few appearances he made… probably the same with Wisely, too.**

**I always ramble in these… I'll try not to do that so much next time.**


	18. Sugar and Spice

**CHAPTER 18**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kiyoko, Kyoko).**

**OvO**

Sugar and Spice

The pink-haired girl started as the laughter was suddenly cut off. Hesitantly, she raised her head, gaping when, instead of a psychotic redhead standing before her, a boy-man with chocolaty brown hair swept back into a small pigtail stared down at her. Well, she thought he stared—she couldn't tell, because she couldn't see his face.

"What're you doing, just sitting there?" She started when he spoke. He sounded familiar, for some reason.

She tried looking him in the eye, but something about him compelled her not to, turned her eyes elsewhere whenever she tried getting a glimpse of more than just brown hair and pale skin.

"I-I…" She frowned as the heat in her tummy came back full-force, oddly welcome and strangely comforting. What was causing it this time? "Who are you? What'd you do to that man?" She couldn't tell, since he didn't have visible facial features, but she thought that the chocolate-brown youth was slightly miffed by her response.

"What does it matter what I did with him?" he retorted. "Do you want me to bring him back?"

"U-Uhn, dame!" she quickly replied, clutching her clothes tighter to her chest, which was still gaping open with its wound. Doubling over in pain, she gasped when she found warm, surprisingly gentle hands pulling her up against a rabidly thumping chest.

"A-Arigato," she mumbled, her voice muffled by the soft linen of his shirt pressing into her face. For some reason, her body was getting… warm. Her stomach, tingly. "Ne, what's your name?"

She felt him stiffen beside her. "My name…?"

"Uhn. I'm Ku—" she paused, reconsidering. "Wait, I _think_ I'm… Ki—" She stopped again. That sounded wrong, too. "K-Ku…"

"You should remember your own name before asking me for mine," the brown-haired boy-man snorted.

She shivered as his breath of air brushed past her ear. "I-I do, I just—" she gasped when he hefted her up into his arms with a small grunt. "W-What're you—?" The rest of her question was cut off by a twinge of pain in her chest. She whimpered and clung closer to the boy-man, screwing her eyes tightly shut as the frantic rocking motion further jarred the wounds she'd received earlier.

"S-Sorry," he gruffly muttered, slowing down and loosening his hold on her. When she responded by automatically wrapping her arms around his neck and whimpering, he tightened his embrace.

"W-Where are we going?"

"Away from here."

"Ah, okay…" she sighed, her lips brushing against his skin slightly as she did. Was he getting warmer?

She yawned as the gentle swaying coupled with the severity of her wounds made her sleepy and tired. "Ne… if I remember my name, will you tell me yours?"

It took a few seconds, but the chocolate-haired youth finally replied. "I'll tell you a name, but only if you remember."

"Uhn…" she yawned, nestling her head into the crook of his neck. He smelled really nice, like candied sweets.

She felt him stumble as a child's song filled the air—or maybe she'd imagined it?

"Innocent child, oh so sweet,

Aren't you going to be a treat!

Fiery child, why so wild?

Wouldn't like you though, if you were mild.

Child of glass, nothing concrete—

Just an empty shell full of deceit.

With no friends for talk and no friends for play,

Now that you've pushed everyone away.

Ne, child of sugar and spice—

Was it really worth the price?"

Her eyelids fluttered open briefly as the song came to a close. The voice and tune were familiar, though the lyrics weren't. They did remind her of someone, though. Someone she knew real well, or used to, at least.

She squirmed as the hands holding her shifted about. "Stop."

"Why? I'm not done playing with her yet." The conversation came to her somewhat muffled and indistinct. She had to strain her ears to hear, and even then, she couldn't catch all of it. She closed her eyes. Maybe she should just go to sleep instead.

"If you were, we wouldn't have anyone useful to take back to Millenium." She contentedly smiled as the chocolate boy's hands settled once more along the back of her thighs, cradling her to his chest. She liked it, his touch, since it made the heat in her tummy grow hotter. This made her cold body warm up faster.

"There's still the other one."

"She's no good, too… _boring_ for his tastes."

"Are you sure this isn't just some excuse to cuddle with your _crush?_" There was a sudden dip in elevation, accompanied by a feminine yelp. "Fine, _fine_, if you say so, _meanie_. You owe me some sweets though!" She sighed as the lilting voice grew fainter, leaving the two of them to awkward, dreadful silence.

"Ne…"

"What is it?"

She paused a moment to recollect her thoughts before sleepily breaking into song.

"Sing to me,

Won't you please?

A lullaby of the stars,

To hide all these scars."

The reply came almost automatically. "No."

"Eh, really?" Her heart fell, and she sighed into his neck. "Uhn-kay…"

There was a short, five-second interval before the silence was broken. "How bout a story instead?" he muttered, his voice sounding the slightest bit remorseful.

"Uhn-kay," she breathily murmured, snuggling closer and nuzzling his neck. His skin tasted good, like sweet sugar mixed with sizzling spice.

"There once was this girl, one who loved sweets and shiny things. She was a very sweet person, real… _cutesy_. She always carried around a big rabbit plush, though no one knew why." For some reason, these details tickled something in the back of her head—something important and _painful_—but she ignored it. She didn't want to miss any parts of his story.

"People liked her, though sometimes they didn't know why." His hands tightened momentarily at this but quickly loosened when she squirmed.

"She wasn't a normal girl though, which is why she did lots of bad things to people, people who cared about her." She frowned. She didn't like where this was headed.

"Whenever she did something bad, she would run away, because she was scared of being called a monster." Her hands tightened at the word. _Monster_. That word didn't sit well with her, for some reason.

"N-Ne, I don't wanna… don't wanna listen to this story no more." It made her chest hurt, though maybe that was just the gaping hole in her chest.

"You asked me for a story, so you better listen to it all the way through," he irritably grumbled. She sighed and tightened her hold on him, sitting in miserable silence as he continued with the tale.

He cleared his throat before continuing. "She seemed to always be on the run, but she always got enough to eat. Still, no matter how much she ate, she was always craving something. It wasn't until she met a certain person that she realized what she craved was human company, something to sate the loneliness inside her." Her interest piqued.

"Who did she meet?" she asked, closing her eyes. "Was it someone with lotsa food and shiny things for her to play with?"

"I-I don't know."

"You're the story teller," she slurred. "Aren't you supposed to know…?"

"Let's say he did, then. He had so many things for her to eat and play with that she was happier than she'd ever been before."

"Ne, was she still hungry?"

"What? No, she got lots of food—"

"Uhn, I mean… was she still hungry for love? Since she was lonely, ya know."

There was a long pause. "No. No, she wasn't." Was it her, or was his voice huskier than before?

"Uhn, that's nice…" Something tickled at the back of her head, and she puckered her lips. "Ne, I have a question…"

He sighed. "What is it?"

"The person she met… did she love them, or did she 'love' them?"

"Why?"

"Uhn, cuz—cuz…" a memory flickered at the edge of her mind, a hazy, indistinct image of a girl with shoulder-length green hair. "Cuz… I remembered something someone said a little while back…" She couldn't remember who had said it. Why couldn't she remember who'd said it?

She screwed her eyes shut even tighter. Trying to remember hurt, so much more so than the hole in her chest.

"There's two different kinds of love, didja know that?" she continued brightly, switching topics. "I didn't, not til—" She paused. "Not til…" Another memory tugged at her, this one of a handsome young red-haired boy-man with a black eye patch, a green eye, and a contagious grin. "...Lavi?" she slurred, uncertainty clawing madly at her head and her heart, her incessantly pounding heart.

"No, that's not my name." His curt reply startled her out of her reverie, and she clutched him closer to her as a sudden bout of uncertainty and dread hit. Or maybe that was just the physical imbalance caused by another change in elevation as the chocolate boy-man lowered them onto a soft patch of grass. She couldn't tell.

She whined when he shifted about and made as if to lift her off onto the ground, sighing contentedly as he settled her once more into a comfortable position on his lap.

Her clenched hands loosened their death hold on the fabric of the chocolate boy's shirt. "Ne, was it you she met?"

"No. I didn't meet her until much later."

"Oh." Her heart stuttered, and her spirits fell. "Th-That's too bad… It woulda been nice if it'd been you she'd met. I… I think she would've liked it. S-Since you smell and taste sorta like candy—" The rest of her sentence was cut off by a gasp as her body was wracked with shudders as more and more memories trailed into her head with gloomy lethargy, tainting her clarity of mind with their inky dark tendrils of sorrow and pain.

A small sob slipped past her lips as he clasped her firmly yet gently to his chest. "I-It _hurts_…" she whimpered, shaking her head to and fro to dispel the dreadfully dull, painfully bright memories that repeatedly jabbed into her heart with deliberate, calculated precision. She gagged as another deluge of memories swamped her, washing her in reminiscences of cherished faces in long-forgotten climes and new-fangled times.

"Life's _supposed_ to hurt, idiot." The voice jerked her out of her painful remembrance. She cracked her eyes open and fearfully looked up at her chocolate companion, somewhat glad when his face remained a blank to her. She probably couldn't have taken it if it had morphed into someone familiar.

"Meanie," she breathlessly giggled, wincing as another deluge of memories assaulted her. Her eyes widened as he slowly, awkwardly patted her head with one hand. She sighed as the pain subsided somewhat, though the heat in her tummy seemed only to grow with the physical contact.

"Ne… can I stay here with you?" she implored, staring up at him with soulful amber eyes. "You make the pain go away, sorta."

"Are you sure you don't have somewhere else to go?" he gruffly replied, sounding a little hopeful and disappointed.

"Uhn, I don't—" She suddenly jerked up as a different memory pushed up against her mind. It was one of a… person, smiling down at her, telling her… something, something important.

She stood up on unsteady, trembling legs as a sudden sense of urgency engulfed her. "I think—I-I'm not… not supposed to _be_ here. I'm supposed to, supposed to be…" She raised one pale hand to cradle her throbbing head as she was hit by a sudden realization.

Fearfully, she turned to her companion. "A-Am I… if I remember everything, am I gonna hafta leave?" When her question was met with silence, her eyes began welling up. She didn't want to leave him, not when she hadn't found out his name yet.

"No need to cry," he sighed. "You'll be seeing me outside, still."

"R-Really?" she sniffled, wiping at her face, which was suddenly wet. "Y-You—that's a promise, right?"

"Right, a promise."

"Wait!" She surprised him by rushing over and throwing herself atop of him, holding him in a tight embrace. "We should introduce ourselves first before we say goodbye, ne?" she hummed. "I'm Kumori!" She looked at him expectantly, and, after a belated minute, he replied.

"You can call me… Hayden."

"Arigato, Hayden," she hummed, giving him one last squeeze.

**O**

Hayden sat there for a few moments after Kumori disappeared from the dream. He glared as a petite, grime-encrusted pink-haired girl walked up to him.

"Ne, that was sooo _cute!_" she giggled, twirling around him. "If I didn't know better, Wisely, I'd say that you're starting to _'love'_ me."

"Take of that costume and stop being ridiculous, Road," he snapped, his pale skin taking on a grey cast as his brown hair morphed into its more familiar white. "I'm just softening her up for later, like Tyki did with that girl."

The pink-haired girl sighed before changing, growing several inches as her hair fluctuated between pink and red before settling on a light shade of purple. "Tell yourself whatever you want, Wisely," Road tittered, brandishing a pink lollipop. "Just don't let Millenie find out you're taking this _way_ too seriously."

As Wisely got up, Road traipsed over and gave him an inquisitive grin. "Hey, why'd you choose the name 'Hayden'?"

Wisely turned and gave her a smirk. "It means 'heathen'."

**TvT**

**Sorry if nothing exciting happened with Nea, I didn't know what exactly to do with him, heheh... my bad. Oh wells…**

**I hoped yall LIKED this (?) since it was, like, the only part of this arc or whatever that I enjoyed writing. Probably since it was sorta romantic… it was really unexpected, though. Hayden only came into being since I didn't know what to do with Nea, and now that he's **_**here**_**… well, things are gonna be a little different from what I'd planned. More romantic fillers, though, so yay!**

**Did I make Kumori too affectionate in this, do you think? I couldn't help it, though… guess yall can tell who **_**I'M**_** secretly rooting for in this fanfic, heheh.**


	19. Waking Up, From One Nightmare to Another

**CHAPTER 19**

**Just so ya knoooow~! I've no beta, so I sometimes go and edit my stuff again and change stuff a lot and replace chapters, so… I changed the end of 17 (and added more mature fluff to 7, if anyone's interested? Not mandatory, of course) and put it in here, but changed it sorta, so… yeah. Also ADDED LOTSA STUFF to this since you've seen it last, so… sorry (feel sorta bad for all those people that keep up w/ my shit and hafta go back and reread whenever I change the story).**

**Well, you may commence (re)reading.**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, and Kyoko).**

**.**

Waking Up – From One Nightmare to Another

One instant Kumori was in the dreamland with Hayden, the next she was opening her eyes to the dark streets of Rome.

"Don't—!" Disoriented, she didn't process the scene before her until she heard dull thud, an inhalation of breath. She looked down and started when she saw a blade—was it one of hers?—plunged hilt-deep into a woman's chest. She quailed when she realized it was _the_ young woman, the mean one from before.

Kumori's amber eyes widened as the young woman shrieked, flailing about with her tethered arms as black stars appeared on her pale skin and spread throughout her body.

"N-Nani…?"

"K-Kumori?" Her head snapped up at the hopeful tone in that familiar voice. Kumori felt her eyes well up with tears as she saw Lavi and Kyoko standing beneath her, chained in tendrils of her dark Innocence.

Confusion swept through her. "W-Why…?" She stopped, flinching as, with one last breathy rasp, the woman collapsed into herself in a swirl of ash. "What… what did I do?"

"You did what any akuma servant would." Kumori whirled around and came face-to-face with a sardonic Tyki Mikk and cheeky Road Kamelot, who was floating atop a pink umbrella with a nasty-looking pumpkin at one end. In the distance, Kumori could see an unsteady Wisely getting to his feet, rubbing his shaking head. She quickly looked away when his head snapped up and turned her way.

For some reason, the strange dream's tummy heat hadn't gone away.

"You may have received some odd training from the Fourteenth," Tyki continued, unaware of her lapse in concentration, "but you aren't totally immune to us, are you?"

"I-I…" Kumori stopped when she saw the Noah of Dreams prop up a small silver platter on her lap. Road smirked when Kumori noticed her rifling through Pichoncho's pack. With a mocking grin, she eloquently stabbed another piece of chocolate with a delicate silver fork and popped it into her mouth with over-exaggerated relish.

"Ooh, did you know, Lavi?" Road mumbled around a mouthful of decades-old sweets, "Kumori has a _real_ interesting relationship with the Fourteenth." Her amber eyes grew hooded and wicked. "Wanna hear it?"

"R-Road-sama, d—"

"Ah, you're right, Kumori!" Road sang, giving her a spiteful grin. "I can't believe I _forgot! _We have to start at the beginning, _before_ you met Nea!" With a leap and a flourish, Road danced around the two exorcists, who were eyeing her warily. "Kumori's half-akuma, half-human, but she wasn't born the normal way. She ripped and clawed her way out of the womb at an unnatural, inhuman rate."

"Wisely, you saw enough of the memories, didn't you?" Road asked, giving the other Noah a cheeky grin. "Why don't you just show them how it happened?"

"Sure," he nonchalantly replied, "if you want." Kumori's eyes widened as he raised his hand and pointed it out to the pair behind her.

"P-Please, don't—!" Kumori whirled around in a panic when she heard a dull thud from behind.

**O.O**

A sudden bout of vertigo, as Lavi's mind was assailed by foreign sensations and emotions. He gasped and toppled forward, hearing Kumori cry out his name. Her voice was faint, though, as if it reached him over a great distance rather than a few mere feet.

He started, his breath coming out in strange pants as his vision became impaired—a double image imposed on his sight by the Noah's doing. His eye widened as, through a grainy filter, he watched a gathering of scared folk watch a woman give live birth in a dirty brick hovel.

Birth was a subjective term in this case, though—the thing in her womb burst out of her body in a flash of green and a blast of bloody gore, letting out an unearthly screech that nearly drowned out the pained screams of the dying woman as it clawed and slashed, ripped and sliced its way into the world.

The redhead watched in fascinated horror as the thing flopped onto the dirt, the people around them scrambling away in disgust and fear as Kumori—even if Road hadn't told him, the pink fluff was a dead giveaway—scrambled around in the blood-drenched mud, gasping for breath every moment she wasn't shrieking bloody-murder.

Lavi's eye widened when he realized that Kumori was _growing_. Whereas she'd sprung from the womb the size of a normal babe, now she was the size of a two-year-old. He took a step back when, with one final, heaving gasp, Kumori flopped onto the floor in almost the same condition he'd found her during their first encounter.

"K…o…" Lavi turned in surprise when he saw the woman was still alive, though barely. He winced as the sound of torn flesh and broken bones dragging across bare rock assailed his ears. "M-My… pure child, Kiyo..ko," the mother lovingly crooned, raising one bloody hand to the wretched, trembling thing that was Kumori. "So… beautiful, your innocence…" With a content sigh, the woman collapsed, one outstretched hand falling atop the pink-haired girl.

Lavi didn't miss Kumori's flinch as her mother's hand made contact.

"B-Bakemono!" Lavi rushed forward when he saw a man take a threatening step towards his pixie.

"Oi! St—" The rest of his words died on his lips when Lavi's hand passed through the apparition. The redhead cursed. He'd forgotten that this was just a memory, something that had already happened. There was nothing he could do to change the outcome.

The red-haired Junior Bookman growled in rising anger as he was forced to watch the other individuals in the hovel attack Kumori in ire and fear, the disoriented girl unable to do much except cower as the violence grew in intensity and ferocity.

That was until she regained her senses, of course.

One of his hands rose to block the bottom half of his face from the ghost of the stench that he knew would be present in the mirage as Lavi steadfastly watched the massacre. The cowering girl had finally retaliated and was shredding flesh and breaking bones in a screeching whirl of pink, white, and red.

Lavi was relieved that she didn't turn into an akuma, but her retention of a relatively human form only made the scene worse.

His face twisted into a grimace as slabs of flesh flew through his ephemeral body to splatter the walls of the hovel. His hands flew up as a hot gust of wind suddenly sprang up, taking with it the smell of death and the scene before him. He opened his eyes and watched in growing melancholy as decades of Kumori's life were compressed into a matter of minute-long acts oozing with the sheer magnitude of her confusion and despair as those around her vanished into dust, nothing but trinkets—the same exact ones she kept in that bag of hers—as she was left alone. Always alone, until—

A red-haired man with amber eyes and an easy smile.

His heart clenched painfully as Kumori's happiness blossomed and overflowed, and his soul cried out in anguish when that joy withered and wasted away to desolation.

Lavi's hands tightened as Kumori started up an unearthly, melancholy keening, the petite girl burying her face atop the stiff corpse of the Fourteenth, lying abandoned in a dark wood amid rot and decay.

He started when the scene shifted to one that was all-too familiar for him. A small, bitter smile lifted his face as he watched himself streak towards Kumori in a fit of rage, though the smile dropped when he heard something he hadn't before, on that night.

"_Nea-sama…?"_ He stiffened, and the memories slowly leeched away, only to be replaced by the less-than-pleasant reality.

**OxO**

Kumori frowned as Lavi and Kyoko blinked themselves from their silent stupor. What had the Mind Peeper shown them? From the stunned looks on their faces, it hadn't been anything good.

"Why'd you stop, Wisely?" Kumori fidgeted as Road ate yet another one of her precious treasures, the ones given her by those friends, so long ago. As if noticing her discomfort and taking pleasure from it, Road took an especially big bite of another piece of decades-old caramel sweet.

"Today was the deadline, Road," Tyki admonished, lighting a cigar and taking a long drag from it. He turned to the mind reader. "Should we take her with us?" Lavi stiffened at this and shot to his feet, one hand on his hammer. There was no need though, since Wisely shook his head.

"It'll be more worthwhile if she comes to us on her own." _And come you will, won't you?_ Kumori looked away uncomfortably as the thought flitted about the edges of her mind, looking up only as the three Noah opened up an Arc gate and stepped through. Her eyes met briefly with Wisely's as she did, and the strange heat in her tummy uncoiled and expanded. The last thing she saw of the telepathic Noah was a pert smirk, which did nothing to rid her tummy of its warmth.

**O**

**Man, this shit's been draggin on sooo looong… been bout ten chapters! This is, like, "Mission Mongrel (Part 10)," hahah. Argh, needa stop going off on so many tangents when I talk.**

**Imma leave this chapter short (me from the future saying "LIIIES," since I came back and changed it jus naow) like this (hahah, most of it's just me talking to myself anyways, heheh [not no more it isn't weirdo!] ) so that the numbering for one of my planned chapters is like how I want it to be. Just one more lame chapter (and a cutesy filler) and then they'll be heading home, back to the good stuff!**

**Ooh, ya know, I just realized jus now that people actually read my stuff, ya know? Like, I finally found the button that shows how many people have viewed your stories and stuff, and I was like "oooh…" until I saw the views went down a bit since the first few chapters…**

**My faithful readers, why dontchall, like, gimme a review so I know your name and can properly appreciate/thank your devotion to this fanfic? Jk, imma doodle something for those whose names I know, probably a chibi. I suck at those, but I never finish any normal people I draw, so yeaaah. Maybe I'll just upload links to random drawings I finish, as a way to blind your eyes from the discrepancies and mistakes in my writings.**

**You know, I think imma go remove that one picture link I had a few chapters back, since it's not my best piece of work…**

***siiigh* and here I thought I'd gotten over my long-ass postscripts and shit! Good bye for naow~**


	20. How to Deal

**CHAPTER 20**

**FIRST ITEM OF IMPORTANCE! I'd like to say THANKS to **Misuto Schiffer** the first person to FOLLOW MY STORY! Also (gaaah, feel bad since it took me forever to get around to saying this) thanks to **thexlastxfantasy** (gah, I feel so ungrateful for not having mentioned her before this point /) for reviewing, once upon a time. Well, now that **_**THAT'S**_** done…**

**Next matter of importance! Jus so ya knooow~? I went and added more to ch 19 (my baaad~) since I felt I waaay rushed that. Plus, I needed for her companions to find out more about her and her relationship with most people in the dream, ya know? Though now that I finished refurbishing it, I realized I didn't add as much as I thought I would or should have. But… oh wells. So yeah… go REREAD it after the part I left off at before ya go reading this. Sooorry!**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**OxO**

How to Deal

There was tense silence as the three exorcists sat in the aftermath of their encounter with the Noah. Kyoko shuddered as she remembered how easily the tall Noah had incapacitated the young woman. They could have easily gotten rid of all three of them, but after Kumori had woken up, they'd all decided to leave.

Her mind wanted to shy away from it, but thinking about the Noah was much preferable to thinking about the illusion, though—or was it a memory?

A small motion out of the corner of her eye drew her attention, and Kyoko watched as the pink-haired girl's Noah eyes flitted to the pile of ash and away, morbidly riveted to the remains of her former attacker. A small frown twisted Kyoko's features as her mind wandered again to that blood-drenched hovel.

Kyoko shuddered. She wasn't going to enjoy reporting any of this to Leverrier, especially since bitter, rancorous guilt was choking her. Kumori's betrayal had lost some of its bite, and now that she'd had some time to think about it, the pink-haired girl's reasons for doing so were becoming clearer and more reasonable to her. Still, she didn't want to admit that she was wrong.

Kyoko grimaced when she saw Lavi make his way towards her with a stoic expression she'd come to call the Bookman façade plastered on his face.

She wasn't ready to face _him_, either.

Abruptly, she stood up and, with a clear voice that gainsaid her tumultuous emotions, declared, "I'll be checking up on Michael." Before the redhead could stop her, she hurriedly whipped out Looking Glass and stepped through to her Glass Sanctuary, sighing as, with ghostly fingers, she escaped the oppressive feel of the outside world.

Landing with a light step that belied her heavy heart, Kyoko glanced around for the Finder. A faint footfall sounded behind her, and she slowly turned around. "Mich—?"

Something tackled her, and she lost consciousness as her head smacked into the white marble.

**OoO**

**You know, it must be sooo confusing for those authors that have loadsa different chapters for different stories and stuff, since I only have 20 things on my list of docs and it's getting sorta confusing for me already, differentiating between what's what… must be buttloadsa trouble for those with, like, 10+ fanfics and more than 100 chapters and shit.**

**Well, finished reading a good book in between writing this chapter. Anyone read "enclave" by ann aguirre? Well, I fininshed "outpost" (book 2) and was sooo, like, "FUUUUCK!" over the ending! But there was this totally cute, bittersweet scene at the end, and im like… I wanna do that already for this, ya know? So imma try and hurry to the good shit for this!**

**Anyways, bye!**


	21. 21 Questions

**CHAPTER 21**

**THANKS TO****michi naki michi ****FOR FOLLOWING~!**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Kyoko, and Pichoncho).**

**OvO**

21 Questions

"Kumori, let's play 21 Questions," Lavi declared, forward in his seat and propping his elbows on the edge of the seat in front to look at his lone traveling companion. His head jolted out of his hands and around her shoulders as the train hitched along the tracks. He and Kumori were leaving Rome by train, since Kyoko was indisposed of back at the Order. The black-haired girl hadn't been in any condition to make the trip back for them after Michael had accidentally attacked her in the Glass Sanctuary.

That was fine though, since he got more quality time with his favorite—slightly dejected—pixie.

"What's that?" Kumori disconsolately responded, sighing as she clutched her legs closer to her chest. Lavi smiled painfully at the wretchedness in her voice. She still wasn't acting like her usual self, though that was understandable, he having endured one of Road's dreams before.

That was exactly why he was going to cheer her up with a round of games.

"It's a game where ya ask each other questions. Twenty one, actually. You hafta answer truthfully, too. If ya don't feel like answerin', ya say so. But that means I getta ask an additional two questions."

"Uhn-kay," Kumori sighed, fingers absentmindedly playing with the silver charm of her choker.

Lavi quirked an eyebrow. "First question: why do you wear that choker?" Like Pichoncho the pink rabbit plush, Kumori always had the choker on her person; it rarely, if ever, came off her neck, since there didn't seem to be a clasp of any kind on it.

Kumori's fingers stilled. "This…?"

"Yeah, this," he reiterated, raising one hand to trace the faint ridge along the rim of the pentagram.

"It… it's a—reminder."

"Of…?"

"J-Just—a reminder, to myself. That—that I, I'm…" _Not human_, the thought seemed to whisper, at the edge of that unfinished sentence.

_Of course_, he thought, mentally slapping himself.

"Oh-kay," he replied, with forced gusto. "Your turn to ask now, Kumo-chan!"

"Uhn-kay…" She paused a moment, silently considering. "What am I supposed to ask, Lavi?"

"Anythin' ya want, Kumo-chan."

"Uhn-kay then… is there something wrong with your eye?"

"Nope! It's perfectly fine," Lavi replied, loftily waving one hand.

"Then… why do you wear the eye patch?" she asked, turning to look at him as curiosity and confusion finally drew her out of her somber mood.

"Nope, Kumori, one question only! It's _my_ turn now."

"Uhn, fine," she huffed, with some of her usual innocent indignation. Lavi grinned. The plan was working, it seemed.

"Kay then," he drawled, propping his chin in the crook of her neck. "How bout this…" He grinned when his eyes landed on the plush rabbit. "Why'd you name the golem Pichoncho?" His question was rewarded with a small pout.

"Not gonna answer?" A small headshake. "I get two more questions, then." A vigorous nod. Lavi chuckled. "Okay then…" he sighed, rubbing his cheek lightly against hers. "Why d'ya have the rabbit, and why's Pichoncho in there?"

"La_viii_," Kumori pouted, jerking out of his arms and glaring at him.

"Uh-uh, Kumori, no sneaking outta these ones, else you're gonna hafta answer four more questions!" Lavi's grin widened as Kumori pouted, considering his words before finally sighing in submission.

"The rabbit's for my treasures. Pichoncho's one of them."

"Treasures…? You mean gifts, from your nakamae?"

"Uhn, precious gifts from… from my nakamae," she replied, smiling as the rabbit crawled into her lap. "Is it my turn now?"

"Yep."

"Uhn…" she replied in a long, drawn-out sigh, musing. "Ne, Lavi, do you have any precious gifts, from your nakamae?"

Lavi blinked. "No."

"Why not?" she asked, leaning backwards against the seat to stare up at him with wide, lonesome amber eyes. He stewed over whether he should answer her question—he wasn't obligated to, of course, since she'd already used up the one—but he couldn't resist the gleam in her eyes and the pucker on her lips.

"Bookmen aren't supposed to involve themselves too intimately with others. Me taking gifts and keeping them as mementos would seem like weakness in Bookman's eyes."

"But… that's so _sad_," she mournfully mewled. "How else are you gonna remember them, when they're gone?" At this, her hands clenched unconsciously tighter around her precious parcel.

"You don't," he replied. "Or at least… you're not supposed to, if you're a Bookman, since they're just fragments of history that'll be lost amidst the flow and ebb of time."

"But… how will you remember me then, Lavi, if I disappear?"

"Kumori, I'm sure I'll be disappearing, long before you do."

"Does that mean I'm gonna hafta forget you too, then?" she asked, tears pooling at the edge of her eyes. "I-I don't—I don't _wanna_ forget, though…" she whispered, hands shooting up to wipe at her suddenly wet cheeks.

Lavi gently took her hands in his. "You don't hafta forget—I don't want you to—since I don't wanna forget you too, Kumori."

"Then, why—?"

"Nope," Lavi smirked, covering his lips with one finger. "It's my turn to ask, and I get additional questions, since you got more turns then you were supposed to."

Ignoring her muffled response, he leaned forward until his eyes were level with hers, their lashes nearly brushing against each other's. "D'ya want me to give you a gift?" She nodded.

"Is it fine, if you can't eat it like ya can the other ones?" Again, she nodded, though this time with a little more uncertainty. At her garbled response, he lifted his finger.

"I don' eat the gifts, Lavi, I keep them."

"Just makin' sure, Kumo-chan." He smiled a tad nervously. How was she going to receive this _gift_, he wondered? _Well, here goes_, he thought. Leaning forward slightly—there wasn't much of a distance to close between the two of them—Lavi gently brushed his lips against hers in a chaste kiss, deepening it when she gasped, opening her mouth to his. Somehow, without breaking the kiss, he managed to get her over the seat and into his lap, the pink rabbit plush falling to the floor as he did.

It was a good thing they were the only passengers in this part of the train, else some alma mater would've knocked him over the head for taking advantage of a helpless, defenseless girl like Kumori. If only they knew…

His thoughts quickly dissipated and drifted away as his hands roved lightly over Kumori's petite body, dancing over the small of her back as she arched her body towards his. She mewled in dissatisfaction when he broke the kiss, but she purred in contentment when he began nuzzling her neck.

"Say, Kumo-chan, how—" he rubbed against her like a cat would its fond person "—do you usually feel—" he lovingly nipped her ear "—when people give you gifts?"

"U-Uh, h-happy, and—" she sighed in disappointment when his hands came to a rest at her hips "—precious."

"And how does _this_ make you feel?" The question was punctuated by a slight gyration of hips, a small gasp.

"T-Tha… uhhhn." The rest of her reply was cut off as he kissed her again.

"What? I can't hear you," he replied, biting onto her bottom lip and pulling gently, teasingly.

"I-I fffeel—lovshed."

Lavi pulled away from her lips and wrapped his arms around her, burying her face in the crook of his neck. "Good," he murmured, softly patting her on the head. With a small exhale, Kumori snuggled in closer to him, wrapping her thin arms around his waist.

"Ne, Lavi…"

"Yeah?"

"I feel… tired…"

"You can sleep, f ya want."

"But… m'question…"

"We can keep playin' after you wake up."

"Uhn-kay then… night, Lavi."

"Night, Kumori."

As her breathing slowed and her body relaxed against his, Lavi's smile slipped off. The games had been as much a ploy to cheer him up as well as her, since his heart was still in turmoil over the discovery that Kumori was part akuma. She'd die, eventually—if not by his hands, then by the hands of some other exorcist. And who knew what would happen to her once the Millennium Earl was defeated?

Still, despite the discovery, Lavi still found it hard to resist the urge to land her with another round of kissing and cuddling. He almost did, but then he saw the edge of a pink ear peeking out the edge of the seat in front and remembered the unwanted audience of one. He contented himself with a simple kiss to the forehead.

**OwO**

**Was reading S.L.H Stray Love Hearts again. Second time I've read it, love shouoto aya's manga, though I wish they'd hurry and update barajou no kiss and pureblood bf and super darling! already… Dontchall feel like something else coulda happened after S.L.H., though? Like, she shoulda elaborated on kousestu-san's past more (I'da liked that)… Is it me, or did the lady he was holding resemble the seer lady back at kumoide house? I'd say that that's my fav shoujo manga thus far, along with barajou no kiss, maybe(?) and… I think imma go reread Alice in the Country of Hearts again, too! I like that one too! (I love almost all alice/wonderland-themed manga/stories, actually). Ugh, now imma hafta go do an alice-in-wonderland special in the future for this fanfic. Or maybe just a separate (clichéd) DGM wonderland fanfic…? Hm, never mind, imma do both, but I'll just merge the alice idea with one of my preexisting chapter ideas for this! Yay~! More romantic ideas, heehees~!**

**Heheh, I was gonna go reread Angel Diary instead of S.L.H., glad I went and read her new manhwa instead, tiara. The main girl's funny, reminds me sorta of the girl in legend (sooo needs updating, been on seeming hiatus for more than a year now!).**

**Damn, wish I could buy the entire series for S.L.H. and Alice in the Country of Hearts…! Imma make that my goal, along with the entire DGM anime series in one of them thingies that comes with a soundtrack fulla opening/closing songs! Ugh, that's gonna cost me…! It'll be worth it, though! Ungh, now I wanna go do a fanfic for Alice in the Country of Hearts, even though I don't have any ideas… I read the manga before watching the movie they made; the movie was… not as good as I'd hoped.**

**Anyways…! Made this filler chapter to satisfy my need for some more LaviLove time. Dontchall feel like he's being emotionally/romantically neglected? I do. Hence the upside-down (?) kiss, teehees! Don't ask me how Lavi managed to get her out of the seat, I seriously don't know. Did yall find the ending lacking? I did, but I aint gonna fix it. Really. I aint gonna go reedit it and repost it this time around, folks, so no worries! Though it does sorta make Lavi look like a rapist, him wanting to kiss sleeping, defenseless girls… oh wells.**

**Inspiration for this came from my friend tina, in my 3****rd**** period PE class. She told me bout some guy playing 21 questions with her and asking a whole buttloada strangely personal shit, so I was like, HAhAH! Go, Lavi! Bombard dear, oblivious Kumori with your sexual innuendoes and sensual lips! HAAAH, kidding, kidding. Merely a few stolen kisses, nothing more, sadly… bad, naughty Lavi didn't get his way, (un)fortunately.**

**Sorry bout that long-ass spin bout random manga/manhwa yall may or may not have heard about (made this one helluva author's note!).Go checkem out, if you haven't readem! Anyways, bye!**

**Oh yeah, totally forgot, but I hafta go change the thing from Romance/Friendship to Romance/Tragedy… ugh, such a hassle. I like it, so that makes it worth it.**


	22. Unorthodox Ways

**CHAPTER 22**

**Sorry, michi naki michi, I've planned to make this a tragedy since, like, ten chapters ago, it's jus I never remembered that that category thingy existed for me to change. Nice to know that people actually read my long-ass AN's, so… thanks! Thanks also to all those new people that followed and favorite and stuff. Yall sooo make me happy, hahah.**

**(this part written different time period from part before! Sorry bout the long update, I had lotsa stuff to do, not to mention the lack of internet…)**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko.**

**OvO**

Unorthodox Ways

There was an oppressive air about the Black Order as Lavi and Kumori—and Pichoncho too, of course—made their way to Komui's office. Judging from the looks of those they encountered along the way, news of their failed mission had already spread, though the suspicious, almost resentful glares directed at the pixie also meant that her secret had somehow leaked.

Lavi stood protectively in front of Kumori when one familiar form detached itself from the suspicious crowd, one hand raised threateningly in the form of a fist. The redhead stopped Chaoji Han from progressing further with a firm hand to the shoulder.

"What do you want, Chaoji?"

"Nothing much, Lavi. Just wanted to have a word with the half-breed traitor."

Lavi gave Chaoji a warning smile, laying his other hand on the top of his hammer. "Wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Why're you protecting her? She's going to betray us just like Walker did."

"Allen's not a traitor, Chaoji, and neither is Kumori."

He felt a small tug on his sleeve. "Who's that, Lavi?" Kumori looked up at him with wide, glassy amber eyes, an infinitesimal twist of the lips suggesting the return of her previous melancholy. Brought on by Chaoji and the crowd of haters, no doubt.

"Just a friend, Kumo-chan," Lavi replied, taking one of her small hands in his and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"Really?" she replied, eyeing Chaoji with obvious doubt. "Why's he being so_ mean_ then?"

As Chaoji's mouth twisted into the beginnings of a snarl, Lavi swiftly pushed past him. "Talk to ya later, Chaoji!" he called over one shoulder. "I gotta show Kumori to Komui's office."

The bitter exorcist shouted out one last word to Lavi as he quickly led the pink-haired girl away. "You can't protect her forever, Lavi. Eventually, your guard will slip. And I'll be there."

**O.O**

"Punctuality is key in an exorcist's performance of duty" was the first thing that left the mustachioed man's lips when Lavi and Kumori entered the office.

"Gomen ne, Komui-san," Kumori smiled, ignoring the other man. "We took a _long_ time getting back…"

"You're here now, so that's fine," Komui replied, pushing his glasses up. He sighed. "We already got parts of what happened in Rome from Michael and Kyoko, when she was conscious. We only need a few more details."

"From what Kawasaki has told us, Kumori attacked both you and herself?"

"No, it was—" Lavi's mouth clamped shut when Komui shook his head, casting a significant glance at Leverrier as he did. The redhead grimaced at the smug, determined look on the Inspector's face. He looked like a complacent judge who'd indolently skimmed through the evidence and was simply waiting for the preliminary trial to end so as to dole out retribution.

"Wouldn't it be faster to jus' fill out the report?" Lavi asked, grinning defiantly at the mustachioed man. A faint twitch of his mustache was the only indication that what he'd said had annoyed the Inspector.

"Having the two of you tell us face-to-face will better allow us to tell if you're telling the truth or not."

Komui sighed again. "Well… why don't you tell us what happened, Kumori?"

"Uhn-kay," Kumori murmured, scrunching her face up. "Eto…"

"What is it?"

"Well, there was this really strange dream I had…" At Komui's inquisitive glance, Lavi mouthed Road Kamelot.

"When I woke up, Kyoko-chan and Lavi were staring at me, and the Noah were there, and the mean lady was—"

"Dead by you hand?" Leverrier interrupted. Kumori frowned at him but reluctantly nodded her head.

"That's not fair," Lavi snapped, protectively shoving Kumori behind him. "She wasn't in control of herself when that happened, and you know it."

"Really now?" Leverrier smirked. "Let me ask it this then." Stepping forward and jostling Lavi out of the way, the Inspector glared imperiously down at Kumori. "Who is Kiyoko?"

Lavi's eye didn't miss the pink-haired girl's flinch.

"T-That…" Leverrier arched one bushy eyebrow. Kumori turned her eyes to the ground, and Lavi had to strain his ears to hear the rest of her sentence. "Dark… Specter…" Dark specter?

"Was… me, how Nea wanted me to be."

Leverrier smirked and turned away. "It admits to following the orders of the Fourteenth."

"Yes—no, I… Nea—"

"So you do not deny having done the deed?"

"I—"

"I'm sure you've gotten all the answers you need, Inspector," Komui interrupted, giving Kumori an apologetic smile as a knock sounded at the door. "I'm sure it'd be fine if she went and got cleaned up, don't you think?"

"Yes, yes," the Inspector replied, dismissing Kumori with a wave of his hand. "We've more matters to attend to, at the moment, so you may leave. Not you though," he added, glaring at Lavi as he made to follow his little love to the door. "We've more to discuss with you and the others."

"What is it that you wanted, sir?" Lavi turned around at the familiar voice, keeping his face a neutral blank as Kyoko slowly walked into the room, followed by a slightly put-out Reever and—

**[insert SFX of choice here]**

"J-Jiijii!" Lavi pouted, holding his throbbing red cheek in one hand as he crouched on the floor.

"Bah!" Bookman muttered, shaking his head disapprovingly at the winded redhead whose stomach was still heaving from the old Panda's almighty kick. "Getting yourself caught up in things that don't concern you _again_…"

At the reprimand, the playful outrage slipped off Lavi's face.

"Right," he nonchalantly replied, standing up and brushing out his clothes. Inwardly, he sighed. He'd forgotten that he had a façade to keep up. "So, Komui, what is it ya wanted?"

"I've called you here today because, up until earlier today, the individuals in this room were the only ones aware of Kumori's… situation." It didn't escape Lavi's notice that Kyoko's head turned to him in momentary shock.

With a guilty, self-deprecating smirk, he turned and whispered to her. "Yeah, that's right. I'm a spy, same as you." He turned away as Komui started up again with his monologue.

"I haven't been as forthright as I should've been with the information concerning her origins, since it would've been difficult to cover up lest something… happened, after news spread. That wasn't the only reason behind it, though." Komui exhaled and unfolded his gloved hands. With a heavy wave of his hand, a black golem arose from the dark recesses of his desk drawers and flitted about before landing atop an unbalanced mound of reports that threatened to tip over when the golem made contact.

"Up until this morning, I hadn't been able to determine why Kumori could exist as she is, a half-akuma with strong ties to Innocence. I've come up with a few viable explanations for this."

Komui propped his chin on his hands before proceeding. "Let's say that Kumori's Innocence is of a parasitic nature." Komui waved his hands in supplication when Kyoko made as if to correct him.

"Humor him for a moment," Bookman admonished, one hand raised to his chin in quiet contemplation.

"But Kumori's always so hungry, and the Innocence isn't embedded in any part of her body, and those are the most obvious signs of a parasitic-type accommodator—"

"She's half-akuma, so she'd probably experience the same hunger pangs they do. Plus, the Innocence is embedded in her shadow, Kyoko," Lavi replied, eyes scrunched in concentration as his mind attacked the predicament, "which is basically an _extension_ of her body. But that wouldn't explain how she's still able to use Innocence, since the Innocence has to be constantly, directly interacting with the body."

"Well, this is the interesting part where you'll have to use your imagination a little!" Komui replied, giving them a smile full of benevolent malice. "I had to do a little digging…" With a reproachful glare from Reever and a self-conscious cough, Komui amended the statement. "Well, I had _Reever_ do a little digging. Why don't you take over for a bit?"

Reever shook his head before taking a deep breath and continuing with the strange explanation. "It took a while, but we eventually found something that would make some sort of sense. In Ancient Egypt, the shadow was considered to be part of the soul. And the soul, hypothetically, occupies the same space as the body, so, if one were to follow that line of thinking, the Innocence _would_ be in constant contact with her body without actually occupying it."

"Yes, Reever. And _that_," Komui stated, "would be the parasitic aspect of the explanation."

"But… isn't that the _only_ aspect of the explanation?"

"That's what we assumed at the beginning, Kyoko, and I wish we could leave it at that, but I'm sure you've noticed something… strange, about how Kumori activates her Innocence?" At this, Komui glanced at Lavi for confirmation. When Lavi affirmed this, Komui nodded knowingly. "Like a crystal-type Innocence accommodator, Kumori uses blood—" Komui frowned at the squirms of minor revulsion but continued with the explanation "—to activate her Innocence. I would say we've searched her entire person, but we haven't. There's an article of clothing that seems constantly attached to her, one that we've been unable to remove without fear of hurting Kumori."

A pounding started up in Lavi's head as his blood flowed ice cold through his veins. Without fear of hurting Kumori?

"It's that choker of hers, isn't it?"

"Right, Kyoko. She—"

"Komui." Lavi clamped his jaw shut at the tremor in his voice. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Bookman noticing him. Crap. Façade. He had to keep up his façade. Silently, as best he could, he cleared the sudden lump from his throat. "Explain. What do you mean, _'without fear of hurting Kumori'?_" His adorable little Kumori? They'd tried _hurting_ her?

"Calm down, Lavi," Komui supplicated, pushing his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose. "That's exactly what I mean. There's no way of removing the choker without there being a slight chance of her being hurt in the process. Until we can be sure of the process, the choker will remain, and we'll just have to content ourselves with guesswork."

Lavi tried not to physically relax—Bookman would take obvious note of it. Instead, he crossed his hands behind his head. "What's so special about the choker, anyways?"

"It's made of Dark Matter."

"How did the girl get this choker of Dark Matter?" Bookman inquired, eyes tightening in growing interest.

Lavi knew the answer. She hadn't had it after all, when she was born, and there was only one individual she knew who could've given it to her.

"After a few questions, we discovered that it was a gift to her, from the Fourteenth."

Bookman raised an eyebrow. "The same Fourteenth that died thirty-five years ago?"

"One and the same," Komui replied. "Based off of what Kyoko was able to tell us while she and Lavi experienced a vision while on their mission, one induced by the Noah. It revealed that Kumori is at least fifty years old, if not older, and, at her birth, killed several humans in self-defense _without_ the aid of her akuma abilities. So, at one point, Kumori was given the choker, which most likely activated the dormant akuma-genes in her hybrid body."

"I've noticed that her blood doesn't induce the blood virus effect, however," Bookman intoned. Those were Lavi's thoughts exactly. He'd been with Kumori twice now while she was bleeding, but no pentacles had appeared on his skin.

"Well, we can't say for sure, since we don't quite want to test that out, but we assume that Kumori's Blood Oil—it _is_ Blood Oil, of that we're sure—isn't capable of the blood virus effect, since the Dark Matter already present in her body is in much-diluted concentrations compared to that of akuma. That isn't to say that it wouldn't cause some minor nausea and disorientation, though." That would explain the queasiness during their first meeting, then.

"How does this all connect, again?" Lavi asked impatiently. He had a pixie to guard from the rest of the blood-thirsty world, after all.

"Right, well, we were thinking that the choker could, possibly, be hiding the stigmata typical of crystal-type Innocence, since Kumori does use blood to bond with her Innocence. The congealing of blood could be seen as the battle of Dark Matter and Innocence for dominance."

"But… that doesn't explain her other abilities, like Cerise Liquescent, or Cardinal Castigation, or…" Kyoko's words sputtered to a stop at Reever's sympathetic glance.

"If her Innocence pertains only to shadows…"

"That means that, before joining the Order, Kumori has been exterminating akuma in more… _unorthodox_ ways."

**x**

**Maaan, reading MercenaryCrime's fanfic Falling Angel, and I gotta say… the mind peeper and idiot twins may have bumped Tyki down on my faves list, but I still liked him lots. Now I will forever think of him as the rapist. My fave Noahs will be the mind peeper, the idiot twins, and the rapist. Ah, what a nice list… might as well add fatty and creeper on there too then.**

**Er, hahah, since I can't remember where Leverrier usually is in the manga, he has taken up a seemingly permanent residence in Komui's office… Damn creeper!**

**I actually went and worked on the chapters a little **_**after**_** this before I went back and finished it, hahah... those ones were just sooo much more **_**fun**_**, man! The only part I sorta enjoyed was the explanation bout Kumo-chan's powers, which I FINALLY got OUT THERE! Did you guys think it was cool? I did, the first time I thought of it, back around ch 3 or whatever. But now that I wrote it into the story, I realized that I lack evidence in the previous chapters to support this line of reasoning. The one piece of solid evidence supporting Lavi's awareness was later deleted *bangs head repeatedly on desktop*… Can't believe I forgot to include the details, though! Oh wells. So, what was your favorite part of the explanation?**

**Oh yeah! Lotsa thanks to Rick Riordan for the idea about the SOUL ("Kane Chronicles", guys! Check out "Heroes of Olympus" too, while you're at it! "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" obviously preceeds that)~! **

**Well! Got nothing against Chaoji, it's just I don't remember much bout him, and from all the other fanfics out there, people don't like him, so I was thinking, he'd be the perfect scapegoat for something like this, so… yeah (which is why the parts bout him came out rushed)! Though I'd hafta say, that loophole had me changing around some stuff in ch 24, which was already annoying to change in the first place, what with all that other stuff that you'll find out about later in my other long-ass author's notes.**

**Ooh, wait! Ya know how I was gonna go reread Heart no Kuni no Alice~? Well, I did, and let's jus say I forgot a **_**WHOOOLE**_** lotta **_**shit!**_** Was reading and was like "whadafaaaq?"Forgot how Elliot March is sooo cute, as well as poor directionally-challenged Ace! Been waitin a long time for updates on Clover no Kuni no Alice (Ace x Alice) and Clover no Kuni no Alice – My Fanatic Rabbit (Elliot x Alice, kawaii~!). Damn, seems as if they're on hiatus… been same for more than a year now, hope it don't end up like jiujiu (hiatus since 2009)… Starting to wish Alice had given Peter more love, though! He just seems so love-deprived, ya know? Hope someone makes a manga similar to Clover no Kuni no Alice, except Alice takes a liking to Peter White instead… **

**Also went and watched the Towa no Quon movie series, and… LOVED IT~! **_**Especially**_** EPSILON, who I **_**LOOOVED**_** the instant they introduced hiiim~! Don'tchall just love and **_**ADOOORE**_** those tormented characters? Don't wanna spoil it, but… I KNEW YOU WERE GONNA CHANGE, EPSILON!**

**Anyways… hope this wasn't too disappointing, especially after the long wait! And if it **_**was**_**… well, wait til ch 24, where the cutesy shit starts happening again!**

**Well, it's end of this time's (3/4 of a page) long AN!**


	23. Elusive Silhouettes

**CHAPTER 23**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori).**

**O_O**

Elusive Silhouettes

Lavi let out a short, pert chuckle so as to ease the sudden tension in the room. "Well, what can you expect from a—"

A flash of black, in the periphery, quickly followed by a gleam of silver. Lavi didn't flinch as one of Bookman's needles thudded into the wall beside Leverrier, whose presence in the room had been all but forgotten.

"What is the meaning of this, Bookman?" Leverrier intoned, staring imperiously down his nose at the short old panda.

"Nothing," Bookman replied, lifting his sleeve to his face once again in thought. "Merely an elusive silhouette."

**O.O**

In her room, Kumori gasped and fell to the ground, grasping at her chest as she felt the ghost of a blade pierce her in the chest. When the phantom pain dissipated, she sighed and clutched Pichoncho closer to her before looking up at the shade suddenly before her.

"So Lavi knew all along…?" she hesitantly murmured. Her amber eyes teared up as Dark Specter nodded.

"Uso desu…" she moaned, clutching at her tight, constricted chest. Shouldn't the pain have disappeared already? "Usotsuki Lavi…" As Kumori clutched at her throbbing chest and cried silent tears, the shadow silently disappeared, leaving her to face her sorrows alone.

Always alone.

**T^T**

**Damn, my sister (the one who doesn't really read manga… well, neither of them do, actually) is really into "We Were There" (Bokuwa no Ita, I think?) right now (only got a few more volumes to go) and she keeps TELLING ME WHAT HAPPENS. That'd be good and all since I wasn't ever gonna read it (reading too much manga already) and was sorta interested in the story, but now… I JUST WANT HER TO SHUT UP! The story is ANNOYING! Like, it's waaay too emotionally jam-packed for me, man! I'm only hearing it second-hand, and I'm like, GOD THIS IS HEART-WRENCHING and FRUSTRATING! Don't get me wrong—I'm not saying I hate it, I'm just saying, I don't want all the angsty shit flung in my face anymore… I just want the happy ending already (if there IS one, damn it seems like too much shit's hit the fan for there to be a happy ending…).**

**Anyways… you know how I said a while back that I was gonna rewatch the DGm series again to familiarize myself with everyone? Well, I'm on ep. 42, so yay (not really, since I started rewatching sometime last year, like, during October or something like that, towards the end of the year is all I remember).**

**Well, this was a SHORT one! Almost to the interesting love shit, though!**


	24. Reminder

**CHAPTER 24**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**OvO**

Reminder

Kumori started out of her pity party when someone knocked at her door. Wiping residual tears from her face, she slowly staggered to the door and leaned against it.

"Nani…?"

"Kumori-chan?"

"Ah, Lena-chan…" Kumori opened the door a crack and smiled at the green-haired girl. "Nani, nani?"

"I just came by to—what's wrong?" she asked, noticing Kumori's still damp eyes.

"N-Nothing!" Kumori cheerily replied, smiling at the other girl.

"Kumori…" She bit her lip and turned away.

"Gomen ne, Lena-chan, I hafta go see Michael-kun," Kumori replied, giving Lenalee a small peck on the cheek before flouncing away, Pichoncho clutched tightly to her chest. "Ja ne, Lena-chan!"

"Wait, Kumori! You shouldn't go around on your own right now, it's not safe—!"

Ignoring the Chinese girl's warning, Kumori ran off down the hall.

"Folly Finder, go, go, go!" she quietly chanted under her breath. Almost immediately, she felt something inside her pull north towards Michael. As quickly as she could, ducking her face into Pichoncho's plush fur when other exorcists and Finders glanced at her, Kumori followed the tug in her tummy until it led her to a dark, secluded corner of the Order.

"Mushi mushi," Kumori murmured, giving the Finder a small smile.

"Hey Kumo-chan," Michael responded, returning her limp smile with a brighter, snarkier one of his own.

"Ne, that was mean, telling everyone my secret like that."

"Sorry~!"

"Ne, I don't really think you are," Kumori replied, frowning petulantly when the Finder cheekily grinned at her.

"You're right, I'm not."

"Ne, Road-sama, when're you gonna leave?"

"Hm, I'm not sure yet," Michael airily replied, sighing as he twirled around in a small pirouette.

"Can you leave… now?"

"Eh, I don't think so."

"Please?"

"Nope."

"Pleaaase?"

"Nooope~!" Road cackled—through Michael, of course, which made for a very disconcerting sight—before turning to glare at her. "I'll leave when I feel like it, which'll probably be after I give you a reminder—courtesy of Millenie, of course."

At mention of the jolly old fat Noah, fear squeezed her heart. "W-What is it?"

Waves of sorrow came crashing down around her at the Noah's reply. "You've the end of January to leave the Order. That's… what, two days? Say your goodbyes to your friends and leave before then, else we'll drop by with some of our own and have a bloody party."

Michael—or was it his body?—gave her another smirk before Road's voice echoed in the halls with another line. "Can't wait to see ya, Kumo-_chan_."

And with a small, pained exhale, the Finder crashed to the floor.

"M-Michael-kun! Are you alright?" Kumori cried, rushing forward. She shook his shoulder, discontent puckering her face when he didn't respond. "Michael-kun, dame… I-It's not _funny…!_"

"What're you doing?" The sudden angry retort startled her, and Kumori looked up in dismay when the mean fatty from before—Chaoji, was it?—came stomping towards her.

"What did you _do_ to him!?" he snarled, shoving Kumori roughly out of the way. **(Really though, is there any other way to do that?)** Kumori watched restlessly as the man put his finger to Michael's neck—what was _that_ supposed to do?—and grunted. She flinched when he turned and glared at her.

"You're gonna _pay_, damn traitor…"

**OxO**

**Can Road actually do that? If not… oh wells. My bad.**

**Well, sorry, I lied. No cutesy shit yet… Hang in there, though! Just wait til the 28 (30?) mark, guys!**


	25. We Come Running

**CHAPTER 26**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori)!**

**O.O**

We Come Running

"If you're done with the theatrics, Bookman," Leverrier smirked, turning away dismissively, "then perhaps we could finish up the rest of this foolish talk."

"Right, foolish talk," Komui sighed. "Well, like I said, we can't say for sure, but—" A knock sounded at the door. "Come in."

"Hello, Nii-san," Lenalee said, giving all those in the room—excluding Leverrier, of course—a warm smile as she passed the threshold. "Sorry I'm late. I had a few things to take care of. Um, I ran into Kumori on the way here—she was very upset. Is something wrong?"

"Ah, I was just discussing with Lavi and the others the matter of Kumori's Innocence, but… I don't know what's wrong with Kumori. Lavi, maybe you could go talk to her later?"

"Sure," he replied, the utter picture of nonchalance as he turned around. "I could go now if ya want, if you're done talkin'."

"Ah, well, that'd be fine," Komui replied, a knowing look in his eyes. "We're about done here anyways."

"Alrightie then." With a slight roll of the shoulders, Lavi turned around and walked away, the feel of Bookman's eyes burning holes into his back as he trudged off in search of his little pixie. With a slowness that belied his sense of urgency, Lavi shut the door. He padded along down the hall at a leisurely pace until he was sure the old panda's ears wouldn't be able to pick up the sounds of his footsteps anymore before he started running. If the old panda's words had been any indication, Kumori had probably somehow used that shadow of hers to eavesdrop on their conversation.

She'd probably heard his little confession too, then.

"Damn it," he muttered, running one hand through his hair. He had to apologize, make sure she understood that, though it'd been a chore in the beginning, it wasn't, not anymore—

Lavi stumbled when a loud boom reverberated through the Order halls, bits of dust falling from the ceiling as the rumble grew fainter. Lavi's footsteps sped up. It'd come from the east end of the Order, where most of the Finders were lodged. Hadn't Kumori been looking for Michael?

He broke out into a run when the faint sounds of fighting reached his ears, but when he reached the next hall, he stopped.

What he saw made his blood run cold.

There, in the halls of the Order, was a broiling, writhing mass of darkness, with Chaoji Han caught up in its center. Off to one side, a white lump that must've been Michael was lying abandoned, a small pile of rubble lying atop him. That wasn't what had made him stop in a cold sweat, though. It was the small grey humanoid with strange wings sprouting from its back.

It had vibrant, distinctive pink hair.

**OxO**

**You know, in the song, I like to think that someone's committing suicide, and then the suididee's friends/family "hear the sound" (probably a gunshot, maybe thud of body impacting earth?) and they go out and see. Weird, I know. You shoulda seen my sister's expression (the one who was reading We Were There, still not done with it yet) when she asked me what the song was about and I told her that's what I thought was happening… Doubt the story matched the title, which doesn't match the rest of the titles…**

**So far, there's gonna be a grand total of twelve songfic chapters in AA. There's probably gonna be more, though, heheh. Depends on what strikes my fancy…**


	26. Transformation

**CHAPTER 26**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**OvO**

Transformation

"Kumori…?" She turned and stared at him with bright amber eyes, and Lavi started. On the center of her grey forehead was a dark stigmata. That wasn't the only one, though. Now that she'd turned around, he could see that she had stigmata on the back of the wrist of each hand as well, which was covered with deep purple filaments of gossamer webs, the same kind that seemed to comprise her butterfly wings as well. Most likely, she had stigmata on her ankles, too, which were also covered in the strange material.

Lavi slowly inched closer but stopped, heart clenching painfully when she flinched away. "Let him go, Kumori."

"I-I can't," she replied, eyes tearing up. "If I do, h-he'll attack me, and that might make the ceiling fall on M-Michael-kun…"

Lavi looked at the immobile white lump farther down the hall. "I don't think it'll hurt Michael, Kumori." Nothing would hurt him anymore, from the looks of it.

"Why're you negotiating with it?" Chaoji growled, ineffectually attacking the shadows holding him captive with his Arm of Baptism. For every dark chain he broke, another quickly formed to replace it. "The little monster's just gonna turn on you the instant you take your eyes off it."

"O-Omae…!" Lavi quickly scooted closer to her when Kumori turned to Chaoji, affronted. "Usse, aho!"

"Who you calling a dumbass, you little—!"

"Kumori!" Lavi shouted, wrapping his arms around her. He winced when she struggled and dug a sharp elbow into his stomach with enough force to knock the wind from his body.

"Lemme go!" she cried, her feet kicking the air as he lifted her up against his chest. "Usotsuki Usagi, lemme go!"

"Thought I told you before, Kumori," Lavi chuckled, biting his lip as another blow hit home. "I'm not gonna let you go, not gonna let you leave me all alone."

"Uso!" she screeched. "Uso, uso, uso!" Lavi gasped when one of her flailing feet made contact with his crotch. Kumori flew from his grasp when he fell to the floor, clutching at his throbbing manhood.

"Usotsuki Usagi, you never said that!" Kumori shrieked, her little grey fists suddenly pummeling him in the shoulder.

"W-Well, maybe I… s-shoulda said that a little sooner," Lavi breathlessly laughed. Kumori stilled, and Lavi edged closer, raising his arms to wrap her in an embrace—

—which she side-stepped completely.

"Uhn, maybe you shoulda, Usotsuki Usagi," Kumori murmured, causing little shards of pain to lance through Lavi's chest when she speared him with her bright, tear-filled amber eyes.

Lavi opened his mouth to apologize, to reason, to do _something_, but when he did, there was a gasp. Turning to find the source of the noise, they saw a tall, gaunt Finder at the end of the corridor, horror written plainly across his stricken features. He raised one trembling hand to point at Kumori.

"Bakemono…!" he cursed, rage filling his eyes. She flinched, her eyes wide and stricken. He turned away then.

"There's a Noah inside the Order!" he shouted, and, before Lavi could say a word to prove otherwise, the white-clad figure slipped back around the corner, most likely to warn the others, if the sounds of battle hadn't already.

"Damn it. Kumori—"

There was a great roar of anger.

Lavi turned around and saw Chaoji Han shaking loose the last threads of the chains of darkness before charging at Kumori.

"Chaoji, stop!"

"C'mon, aho!" Kumori challenged, raising her small grey fists.

"Oh, I'm coming over, alright!" Chaoji roared, leaping forward with his fists aglow with the green light of Innocence.

**OxO**

**Hope yall enjoyed the stigmata panic. It was supposed to be more exciting, but the details evaded me, while writing this...**

**I didn't know, but the word "stigmata" is synonymous with shame and humiliation! So isn't it sorta a bad thing for crystal-type exorcists (is that the proper way of naming it?) to have them?**

**Also, yall know how I was gonna rewatch the anime? Well, I'm not gonna do that naow… I'm gonna reread from ch 88 (I'll be able to go read all the omake's I missed about Wisely and the others, heheh). Well, try to, at least. I'm getting side-tracked by lotsa good manga and updates. A manga to avoid, though? Seikon no qwaser (stigmata of iron). I like the idea behind it, but I didn't like the weird echi milk idea (qwasers get their abilities from drinking breast milk) which led to the weird lesbian stuff. When the protagonist (this cute little thirteen-year-old boy who goes by the name of sasha) battled his first qwaser opponent, this weird horny skank, in chapter 3, I was like "Okaaay…" but I kept reading, cuz I didn't think about the **_**other**_** qwasers who might appear. Chapter 4? Appearance of little Goth Lolita qwaser girl, and I was like, "Goodbye~!" Guess I shouldn't begrudge the other sex their yuri, since I'm ever so fond of my yaoi, hahah.**


	27. Verdict

**CHAPTER 27**

**Gosh, there're some NEW READERS AND FOLLOWERS!**

**Er, anyways. Sorry guys, but… I totally skipped the fight scene. I'm just a coward like that.**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Pichoncho, Kumori, that Finder… who's got a weird name that imma jus randomly put in).**

**OxO**

Verdict

There was an ugly, pregnant silence in Komui's office as the three of them stood there, avoiding eye contact. Instead, Lavi looked at their bodies. Chaoji had fared the worst, in their fight—he had two black eyes, and nearly his entire body was covered with bruises—but Lavi wasn't much better. He could feel a dull, aching pain in his side, and his left hand was getting numb.

Kumori looked fine though, thank God. Her regenerative abilities had taken care of everything before she could get hurt too seriously.

Lavi looked up and blinked when Komui coughed into his hand.

"So let me say it again, to get it right…" the man stated, looking them over with a caustic eye. "Apparently, Michael was still under the effects of one of Road Kamelot's spells, and after Kumori encountered this… enchanted Michael, who collapsed due to excess stress from the spell, Chaoji Han can along. There was a misunderstanding, a fight ensued, Lavi appeared, as did Gauss, and now… here we are." He sighed and kneaded his brow with one hand. "I've decided that—"

"The abomination will be placed under the supervision of Central, once we've the proper transport and security." Lavi tried not to glare outright at the man as he walked into the room and took command without so much as a glance at Komui. The purple-haired man's face tensed minutely, but he didn't refute the man's solution.

"I've already called for two… _trustworthy_ exorcists to be sent over to escort their new… charge." Lavi didn't miss how the Inspector's eyes automatically jumped to his face at the mention of more reliable keepers, nor did he miss the defeated slump that appeared in his little pixie's shoulders. "Until then, it will not be allowed to leave the premises."

**OxO**

As the door closed behind them, Lavi reached a tentative hand out to his little friend. "Kumori…" She side-stepped his hand and skipped slowly away, her large rabbit plush clutched tightly to her. With a sigh, he followed after her as she drew closer to the site of their little battle, just moments before.

"Kumori, I'm sorry, bout before, ya know? I—"

"Uso, Usa,

Aka no baka.

No more bubbles,

Cuz there's too many troubles.

Ne, look—what a mess!

Poor Usotsuki Usagi'll die of loneliness."

"Kumori!" Shards of ice lanced through his chest, but she ignored him and kept walking, and he slowed and watched her walk off alone.

**O_O**

**Kumori seems to have stopped singing… not like she actually really did, though. She was supposed to, in this fanfic. I still have a few songs for her to use…**

**Well. Saw this totally weird thing while looking for DGM pics for my fics (hey, that **_**rhymes**_**). It was a yaoi pic, of Link and… Leverrier. And I was liiiike… WT**_**FUUUCK? **_**Who thought of **_**that**_** pairing?**

**Are there any guys reading this, I wonder…? Does mention of yaoi and BL make you squirm in discomfort?**

**Ooh, ya know how I wrote that ONE THING, some time back…? My FIRST one, too? Well, the friend (yes, THAT friend, heheh) that I had read it, well, after much embarrassed giggles and turning-away of faces, I finally got around to asking him whether he liked it. Well, he said… HE FOUND IT ENTICING!? And he actually got a HARD ON!? So I was liiiike… I SUCCEEDED, THEN!? So YEAAAH. I feel happy, heheh.**

**Oh! Starting a new fanfic that ties in with this one, called "Exorcist Altercation!" It's about Kumori's new keepers, one of which is a girl with short blue cotton-candy-colored pixie-cut hair! Hopefully it'll end before this one, since its timespan is less than this… at least, I think it will be. Less, I mean. I plan for there to be another fanfic that ties in with this one ("Noah Proxy"), but like EA, it's timespan is less than AA's and will, hopefully, **_**end**_** before AA's as well.**

**Oh. Were some parts of this rushed, to you?**


	28. Confession

**CHAPTER 28**

**YAAAH, new sketch of Kumori. Not like the old one, since I used pencil. But… like I said, it's a sketch. Tried not to fix it, since sketches look cute, for some reason, with all them messy lines and stuff. It should be obvious once you read this chapter what the scene depicts, though the details aren't accurate in the picture.**

art/kumori-cries-376169544

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**OxO**

Confession

**O.O**

There was complete and utter silence in the dark descent. Her wing beats were nearly imperceptible as Kumori lowered herself down the shaft to Hevlaska. It was tiring, but she didn't want the lights to turn on and let _them_ know she was down here with her.

Her wings stilled and the grey pigment leeched from her skin as pale, ghostly hands wrapped around her. "Mushi mushi, Laska-chan."

"Hello, child. What brings you here?"

"Laska-chan, I—something happened." And Kumori haltingly told Hevlaska of the failed mission, with its strange dreams and appearances, and the tragedy and upheaval upon returning to the Order.

When Kumori finished and wiped a hand across her wet cheeks, Hevlaska slowly exhaled before responding. "What will you do?"

"I-I… I'm gonna leave, before they come take me away."

"Before you do that, though, will you bid them farewell? You've a loose end to tie, with that love-struck child."

Kumori covered her ears and shook her head furiously to and fro, and Hevlaska heaved a melancholy sigh. "You cannot escape fate, child. She is relentless and unforgiving, and cares nothing for the regrets of man. The path she has set for you is an especially sad and difficult one, much like that of the Destroyer of Time. I fear and hope that you will find it in your heart of darkness, your Dark Heart, the strength to face it, your destiny."

"I don't—I _don't…!_"

"Hush, child. There will be more time for tears later on. For now, make merry with your friends, in what little time you have left with each other."

As the limbs holding her began to slowly dissipate and fade, Kumori lifted her tear-stained face up at Hevlaska. "Laska-chan… I'll miss you. Lots." She spread her wings and jumped as the last of her friend's body disappeared.

"Farewell, Kiyoko."

Kumori tried not to cry as she flew back up to the light, to the dark, but the pain in her chest was just too much, and the tears started spilling over.

"Pichoncho, it hurts…" she whispered as she buried her face in the soft pink plush. "I don't wanna _go_…"

But she had to. She didn't want to be taken away to Central, where they'd perform strange experiments on her to find out why she could use Innocence. She didn't want leave her friends, who'd have to choose between her and the Order if she didn't. She didn't want to leave _Lavi_, who'd loved her and lied to her.

But she had to.

Her heart clenched painfully at the thought of never seeing them again, but she was used to it, the pain. It wasn't the first time she'd ever left anyone behind.

**O_O**

**Does Kumori still sound like Kumori, in her head? She's supposed to sound… more **_**childish**_**, in her head. That's how it was **_**supposed**_** to be. But I don't think I managed that. Now I don't wanna change her thought processes, since I'd have to go change it back THERE, and that'd be such a hassle.**

**Well, Kumori finally had a talk with Hevlaska. I realized a last month that I didn't ever do that, so I decided to do it now, while I still can. It fits in with the scene, I think.**

**Gaaah, well, we are finally REAAALLY close to the GOOD STUFF! And Kumori finally got around to talking to Hevlaska! Didn't notice til chapter 26 last month that I never had them meet, even in my head.**

**No worries! The next chapter is long, to make up for all this… short stuff. Well, not really (to make up, I mean), but yall can feel free to think that.**

**I like saying yall. Don't you guys? Yall. YAAALL. **_**YAAAAAAAAAAAAWLL**_**. Nyah.**


	29. Celebration of Chocolate Fixation

**CHAPTER 29**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kyoko, Kumori, Pichoncho).**

**O.O**

Celebration of Chocolate Fixation

"Lena-chan, when's it going to be ready? I'm _hungry._"

The green-haired girl merely smiled. "The Chocolate Dream will be ready soon, Kumori-chan, just wait a little more."

"Hai, hai…" she mumbled, plopping down on in front of the delicious not-yet-made dessert and propping her head on Pichoncho's, who was laying on the tabletop.

"Say, Kumori, where's Lavi?"

"Right here, Lena-chan," said exorcist replied, stumbling sleepily into kitchen. Midnight had long-since passed, but he'd stayed up late because of Lenalee and Kumori. They hadn't told him why, though, only that it was a surprise.

"Lavi!" Kumori cried, latching onto him as he settled a big bag of containers of whipped cream on the tabletop.

"Thanks, Lavi!" Lenalee said, opening a container and dolloping nearly five pounds of sugary sweetness into a mixing bowl.

"What're you doin'?" Lavi asked, dipping one finger into the leftover chocolate batter of the other mixing bowl.

"Jerry was kind enough to lend me the kitchen for a few hours," she replied, smiling widely as she mixed white icing—the thick, sweet kind, much to Kumori's joy—in with the whipped cream—much to her dismay. "I usually don't have time to cook, but I decided to do something for Kumori since—"

"Why're you doing it like that?" Kumori asked, cutting her off from spilling the secret. She frowned as the sweet clumps mixed in with the not-so-sweet clumps in the mixing bowl

"It makes the consistency—" Lenalee paused and slapped Lavi's hand away, "—smoother, so it's not as thick. It'll still taste sweet, Kumori!" Kumori looked skeptical at the reassurance but let it drop. She could always just add more icing when Lenalee wasn't looking, after all.

"Okay, and now…" Kumori watched in rapt admiration as the Chinese girl spread the mix of whipped cream and icing on the chocolaty brown mass that Lenalee had poured into an enormous—_enormous_, as in it was the size of those jumbo-sized tin trays with handles on the side—glass platter a while ago.

"Look, Lavi!" she whispered, grabbing onto his hand. A twinge of sadness picked away at her, but she pushed it aside and smiled, putting extra enthusiasm into her voice. "It looks sooo tasty~!"

"Okay, now that that's done, why don't we go check up on the chocolate chip ice cream?"

"Chocolate chip?" _There seemed to be quite a fixation on _chocolate_ here_, thought Lavi. "What else did you guys make?"

Kumori enthusiastically took him over to a fridge and opened it up to reveal several dozen platters of different dishes, all of which were chocolaty desserts. "Ah, we made some chocolate-coated strawberries, pomegranate chocolate dessert, chocolate cakes with strawberries on top, and lotsa little chocolate dessert cups, with chocolate cream and white icing and bits of chocolate or if you don't want those then there's the chocolate dessert cup with white cream at the bottom and blueberries and raspberries and chocolate—"

"S-So, what do you guys have for drinks?"

"We have chocolate smoothies!"

"Isn't that a bit too much chocolate…?" he dropped it once Lenalee gave him a cautionary look and pointed at Kumori, who smiled wickedly at him while closing the refrigerator door with a loud, forbidding thud.

"Nani, Usa-_chan_~?"

"N-Nothin', Kumori! I was just sayin' how that's a really good combination you got there…"

"Eh, really? I think so too, Lavi!"

"That's quite a lot of chocolate, Kumori."

"Uhn! I can't seem to stop thinking about chocolate…" Her thoughts went to a chocolaty fellow—did he have delicious eyes, or a mop of marvelous hair?—and an uncomfortable heat made itself known in her tummy. Lavi and Lenalee laughed as Kumori comically shook her head to dispel the thoughts.

"Come on, let's eat!"

"Well, since the Chocolate Dream is ready—"

"No!" they all turned to look at the pink-haired pixie, who was glaring at them with her hands laid imperiously on her hips. "We need to wait for the invites to arrive, Lavi! It's a birthday party, ne?"

**OwO**

Kyoko was on her way to the library when she heard about Kumori's plans for the early morning.

"I'm not sure when it is, but didn't Lavi's birthday pass already?"

"Yeah, but Kumori's throwing him one because she missed it. That's sweet of her, isn't it?"

The conversation became inaudible as the pair of scientists walked further away. Kyoko frowned and hastened her steps, practically running by the time she reached the library. She slammed the door with a loud bang and slid to the floor.

Kyoko huffed and grabbed at her hair. It shouldn't matter to her what the pixie did with or without her, right? They weren't friends… So why was she upset that she hadn't been included in the plans?

"Is… everything alright?" She gasped and looked up, feeling her face heat up already.

"N-Nothing, Reever-san! E-Everything's fine, really."

"It didn't seem like nothing. What's on your mind?"

Kyoko grimaced before smoothing her face over. "Nothing, just something that Komui-san told me."

"Ah, so you're still upset about Kumori?"

Kyoko sharply looked up at the scientist, who gave her an embarrassed smile. "I've known about her the entire time—I was there when Komui and Hevlaska found out—so there's no need to be secretive about her with me."

She sighed and pushed up her glasses, which had slid down her nose when she'd been running. "Then you should know why I'm so uncomfortable with her now."

"Yeah, I do," he admitted, helping her up to her feet. "But I still don't understand why that should change anything."

She looked at him. "How wouldn't it?"

"Well, sure, Kumori-chan's only half human, but that doesn't change the fact that she's only done well for us since she's gotten here. It'd be the same as someone discriminating against you just because you're half-Japanese and half-European, right?"

Kyoko's head jerked. "Is it that obvious…?"

He laughed. "You've forgotten that I'm part of the science department, so we have easy access to all your records."

Kyoko's blush deepened. "Y-You've been looking through my records…?"

It was Reever's turn to blush. "Ah, s-strictly for professional reasons, of course!"

"R-Right!" Kyoko replied, turning to look through the shelves. She was sort of disappointed that he hadn't been interested in her like she him, but the disappointment was quickly replaced by relief. At least he wasn't some sort of pervert.

"W-Well, if you'd like to know, Kumori's like you—half-Japanese and half-European, I mean."

"Is that so…" Kyoko murmured, clasping her hands together. That explained why Kumori knew and used Japanese terms every so often.

"Say, Reever-san… Are you going to Lavi's late birthday party, the one Kumori's throwing?"

"Hm, yeah, I am. Why do you ask?"

"Would you mind terribly if I were to go _with_… you?"

**OxO**

"Say, Lenalee, where'd Kumori go?"

"Ah, what? Oh, Kumori. Um, I don't know, she might be in the kitchen, but she seemed a little—" Without waiting for the rest of her reply, Lavi rushed off in search of the little pink-haired exorcist, pushing past Finders and exorcists and scientists. He breathed out a sigh of relief when he saw a familiar pink rabbit plush wedged in the doorway of the kitchen.

He silently nudged the plush out of the way and sneaked in, pouncing on the unsuspecting little fairy.

"L-Lavi?!"

"Kumo-chaaan, you don't seem to be enjoyin' the party!"

Kumori smiled. "It's fun, Lavi, really! It's just …" her voice slowly trickled to a pitiful whisper, and a forlorn look settled on her face. Gently, so as not to startle her, Lavi draped his arms around her, and the two of them sat there, wrapped up in the other's presence.

"Hey, Kumori… do you forgive me?"

"Eh, lemme think…"

"Kumori, I—"

Kumori sighed and twisted around in his arms to him back. When his arms tightened around her, she giggled a quick "Not telling!" before slipping out of his arms and dashing out of the kitchen, picking up a bedraggled pink rabbit on the way. She forced a girlish giggle, clutching the rabbit closer to her throbbing chest and increasing her speed when she heard the redhead getting closer. Nimbly, she slipped past the partygoers and sighed in relief when the dining room door was in sight. A high-pitched squeak escaped her throat when Kumori crashed into someone as she opened the door.

"G-Gomen ne…"

"Ah, Kumori! Just the person we were looking for!"

Kumori looked up. "Eh, Reever-san, and—" Her eyes widened. "Kyoko…-chan." The black-haired girl gave her a brief nod before looking away.

"Hey, Lavi! Nice party you got going on here." Kumori looked up to see the redhead give the Japanese girl a probing look before smiling at the Australian.

"It's all Kumo-chan's idea," he said, affectionately, worriedly ruffling up her pink hair.

"Shouldn't the birthday boy be there celebrating it?"

"I'm not a boy, old man," he retorted good-naturedly, slapping the scientist on the shoulder. He turned to look at the girls. "Kumo-chan, ya comin'?"

"You go on ahead, Lavi," Kyoko interjected. "I need to talk to Kumori for a bit."

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he gave her a big grin. "Alright, then. Just know that if Kumo-chan comes cryin', I'm obligated as her boyfriend to do somethin' about it."

"B-Boyfriend?" Reever gaped.

"Hahaha, I was just kiddin'! Reever-san, you should see your face!"

The two, arguing lightly, joined the bright, deafening festivities, leaving the two girls to deal with their dark matters on their own.

The party would drown out their conversation and discourage any eavesdroppers, like a certain red-haired Junior Bookman who was not-so-stealthily spying on them from the doorway. Still, just to be sure… Kyoko grabbed Kumori's arm and pulled them farther away from the dining hall. They stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before the black-haired girl finally spoke.

"It seems… I have to apologize… for something I said some time ago." Kyoko pushed up her glasses and thrust a large bag into Kumori's startled hands. "Here. It's a conciliatory gift."

She cleared her throat before continuing. "I apologize, Kumori, for speaking the way I did. It was—understandable, but out of hand. I should've realized why you would've kept that a secret, and…I hope you'll forgive me for my…short-sightedness. I-I guess I was just… I felt like I'd been betrayed by one of my closest friends, and—"

Her heart-to-heart apology was cut short by the pink-haired girl's glomping.

"Kyoko-chaaan, gomen ne!" Kumori sniveled, clutching the massive bag chocolate truffles in one hand while strangling the bespectacled girl with the other. "I-I lied to you, even though we're friends—"

"Kumori, we aren't friends." Kumori's arms numbly slipped down from the other girl's shoulders.

"W-We aren't…?"

"We're _family_, Kumori!" Kyoko snapped, grasping the shorter girl's shoulders.

"R-Really? How?"

Kyoko sighed. "Not _literally_, Kumori. Just—fine, if you want to get technical, just say it's because we're both part Japanese. There! You happy?"

"What about Lavi?"

"That damn Usagi is part of the family too, because—because he's related to Pichoncho!"

"And Lena-chan?"

"She and Komui-san are Chinese, so we're practically neighbors!"

Kumori giggled, wiping tears of mirth and sadness from her cheeks. The pain in her chest intensified. "Y-You're being so silly, Kyoko, not like your usual self. Is it because you got to talk to Reever-san~?"

"D-Don't be ridiculous, Kumori!" the other retorted, her cheeks turning a rosy pink. "What about you and Lavi, then? You two seem pretty close nowadays!" When had Kumori started calling the rabbit by his _name?_

Kumori giggled. "Lavi said he loves me."

Kyoko gaped at her. "Y-You can't be serious?"

"Uhn, he said that, before we started kissing—"

"_WHAT?!_"

"Waaait~!" Kumori whined, dragging on Kyoko's arm and stopping her from rampaging into the dining hall and plastering the partygoers with Lavi's bloody parts.

"I'm not there for a _week_ and already he's—?! Ooh, that juvenile, improper flirt is _so_ **dead!**" she ground out through clenched teeth.

"Y-You can't! _Kyoko!_ Reever-san—!"

The black-haired girl immediately stopped aiming the gun at the mention of the Australian man. "Damn, you're right," she muttered, putting her guns back in their holsters. "If I do it now, Reever-san will see, and then we'd never be able to build a future together… I'll just get Lavi later, then."

Kumori tremulously smiled as Kyoko carefully straightened out her hair and uniform.

"We should go to Lavi's party now, Kyoko-chan!" Kumori trilled, pulling the reluctant girl along. The dining hall doors burst open as they came closer, and Lavi leapt out at them. He received a boot to the stomach for his troubles.

"W-What was _that_ for, Kyoko?!" Lavi gasped, clutching at his stomach.

"You know full-well _why_, damn Usagi, or need I spell it out for you?" she threatened, cracking her knuckles in a rather unladylike gesture.

"I-I'm good, thanks…"

"Good, now—" she turned around. "Where'd Kumori go?"

"Minna-chan, kochi kochi~!" They all turned to stare at the petite little pixie, who'd climbed on top of a table and was waving her arms wildly about.

"For coming today, arigatooo!" She beamed at them, craning her head to look through the crowd. "Ah, this is just a little party that I wanted to throw for Lavi-kun, cuz I wasn't there before, ne? Gomen ne, if you find this silly…" Lots of hurriedly shouted replies of "No! Not at all!" were thrown at her, and Kumori smiled at them again.

"Uhn, well, I just wanted to say that I really, really, _reaaally_ liked it here at the Order, ya know? Everyone was really nice, and, and I—" her eyes alighted on the redhead, who was making his way through the press of the crowd, and she gave him a teary, apologetic smile. "I caused everyone so much trouble…" She looked at Lavi then, and he was staring at her in confusion and uneasiness as he pushed his way through the crowd to her, Kyoko doing the same at his side. She smiled at them. "Will you forgive me?"

Lavi stared at her in growing comprehension as the others in the room all bellowed "Yeah, we forgive you!"

"Uhn, arigato, ne. I… really appreciate it." Kumori looked down at Pichoncho, which was nudging her with its head. "Uhn. Well, I think I'm out of time now, so… ja ne." Everyone stepped back with cries of shock as shadows surged up around her.

The last thing Kumori saw before the shadows completely engulfed her in a bubble of isolation was Lavi's horrified look of betrayal.

**T_T**

**Hm, well, you know, I had this chapter written before I did chapter 8. This****—well, PART of this, the beginning, mainly—was the original idea for chapter 8 (the numbering has gone from one digit to two, hahah, and from ones to tens to twenties, now, though no thirty, thankfully!). ****I was gonna use it for a different purpose at first, but then I had this sudden idea at the time, so I changed it to fit the idea I'd had, and then, once I'd written down what I'd wanted to happen for this one, I started working on the chapter 8 I'd posted. I like it this way muuuch better, dontcha agree? Well, I woulda liked it more if I hadn't had to go through and change things, since this was written before the 11 part mission. It was a bitch to do that. You can tell, since some parts of this didn't seem frantic (or sensible) enough for what Kumori decided to do. Those were the parts where I sorta was like "what-**_**ever**_**, I jus wanna get to the GOOD STUFF naow~" and yeah, sorry for my half-assed editing.**

**Well… at least I can start writing fun random crap bout Kumori and the Noah naow~! Have lotsa romantic crap planned out already, heheh! Too bad, Lavi, no more LAVILOVE TIME (which, sadly, was growing scarcer anyways…).**

**I wonder what time it was when Kumori and Lavi and Kyoko got back to the Order.**


	30. Ample Hugs and Kisses

**CHAPTER 30**

**Ooh, thank you, RandomMinnesotan, for reading this! And FOLLOWING!**

**Here's some pics I did, of Road, which I would appreciate yall looking at, jus for a moment or two… Which do you think looks better?**

** art/road-kamelot-digital-380602439**

** art/Road-Kamelot-Original-380603043**

**Did I ever get rid of that one picture…?**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Pichoncho, Kyoko).**

**OvO**

Ample Hugs and Kisses

The first thing she noticed when she opened her eyes was the hunger.

It had grown.

Kumori nuzzled in closer to the pink rabbit plush she was sleeping with. "Ne, Pichoncho, do we still have food?" She pouted when it shook its head no. "Mou…" She suddenly kicked her feet up into the air, earning a few curious glances from what little passerby were on the dark morning street. "I'm so, _sooo_ hungry!" she moaned, flailing her arms against the pavement.

With a pout, she turned onto her side and curled up into a ball and wrapped the edges of Dark Soul more tightly around her, pulling the dark cowl down over her face. Kumori was actually sort of glad the hunger was there, though. It kept her mind off of—

She shook her head.

No. She wouldn't think about them, about _him_, with his wry smile and ready jokes and ample hugs and kisses and _lo_—

But she already had, hadn't she?

She smiled as a lone tear ran down the side of her face.

"Ne, Pichoncho… it's hurting again, ya know? My chest." Her hand clutched at her breast, squeezing as the pain inside grew and spread. "Why won't it stop…?"

**O[]O**

**I went and read my first fanfic, Leaching Off the Limelight, and I sigh…  
Why's it seem so different from this one, writing style-wise? I like that one more… Or do I write in the same style but jus think I don't?**

**Imma try to make Kumori sound more like her older self, the one in the first few chapters… I think I'm slipping away from that one (you can tell, since the fake Kumori's in my other fanfics sound way childish like how she was **_**supposed**_** to, though I guess you could jus say that's her early, pre-Nea self?) and getting lazy in writing this, which is why I went and read that first fanfic again, as well as the first, like, twenty chapters of this I posted.**

**Ya know, imma make my "heroine" from that one make an eventual appearance in here and be Kumo's friend(?), heheheh… I like her thought process, though most people probably wouldn't, cuz… she's actually sort of a bitch?**

**Er, how does Millennie refer to Wisely? Chan, like with Road? Or nickname, like with Tyki?**


	31. Restlessness

**CHAPTER 31**

**DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DGM, ONLY MY OCs (Kumori, Kyoko, Pichoncho, Eve).**

**OxO**

Restlessness

For some reason, there was a great feeling of unrest in him. It was probably because of that exorcist girl.

The one he couldn't stop thinking about.

Road wouldn't stop teasing him about it, saying that he'd "fallen for her" and all that other romantic rot. He wasn't like her, forming silly attractions for some stupid (half) human who was going to die. Wisely was just curious, is all. Any human capable of shutting him out of their mind was a great matter of import.

So his interest in her would be natural.

So would his interest in her pixie-like appearance, her fascination with chocolate, and her attraction towards Tyki, who bore a startling resemblance to that blackguard the Fourteenth, who had a strange relationship with said pixie girl.

It was all natural… in a supernatural kind of way of course, considering the fact that he was one of the thirteen apostles, she was one of the Millennium Earl's playthings _acting_ as a false apostle, and they would both try to kill the other because of it.

Wisely looked up from the light novel he'd borrowed from Tyki when the door to his room burst open. His eyebrows rose slightly when he saw that it wasn't Sheril, like he'd expected, but the Millenium Earl.

The tall, fat man came bounding over to his bed before coming to an abrupt standstill. "Wisely-chan, I have something you might like to hear~ **‹**3"

He sighed. "What is it?"

"Road-chan told me something interesting about that little girl you met~ **‹**3"

In the midst of flipping a page, he stilled. "Really." She hadn't told the Earl that nonsense about him being "in love" with that girl Kumori, had she?

"Yes, quite interesting. My little akuma tell me the same, too~ **‹**3" He hadn't done anything incriminating to indicate his supposed affection for Kumori in front of the Earl's toys… had he?

"What's so interesting about that exorcist girl?" Other than her pink hair, chocolate obsession, and fascination with murderers, of course.

"She's finally left the order, it seems~ **‹**3"

A small smile tried to creep across his face, but it was easily squashed. He hid this by faking a yawn. "And what do you want me to do, exactly?"

"Why, to bring her here and introduce us, of course~ **‹**3"

This should've made him relax, but for some reason, Wisely tensed up even further. He didn't quite like that forbidding note in the Earl's voice. Also, he didn't like the idea of trekking across all of Europe just to find one girl, even one as pink and interesting as Kumori. "Because of her strange abilities?"

"Ah, yes. But also because I would so like to meet the friend Nea kept secret from me~ **‹**3"

"Will Road be coming?" It would be very convenient to just have her use one of her portals.

"Ah, Road-chan and Tyki are busy at the moment and won't be back for a few days~ **‹**3"

Wisely sat back against the soft cushions. "I'll just wait for her then."

A frown creased his lips when the Earl smiled at him with his especially-disturbing smile, the one usually reserved for the idiot twins. "I'd very much prefer if you left _now_, Wisely-chan~ **‹**3"

"Alright," he mumbled, carelessly throwing the light novel aside. His frown lifted somewhat at the prospect of meeting the pink-haired pixie girl again, though. At least he'd be able to see if she would still be able to keep him out.

The Earl, who had walked back to the door and was about to cross over the threshold, paused. "Say, would you take Eve with you? She's been getting restless lately~ **‹**3"

His sudden, uncommon enthusiasm diminished somewhat, but he replied with a muttered "Sure."

"That's nice. Oh, and one more thing. Wisely-chan~ **‹**3?" The Millennium Earl turned and stared at him, his monocles glinting ever so slightly with sudden dark intent. "Don't get too excited. She seems like a cute pet, but we may end up not keeping her~ **‹**3"

**O_O**

**Oh Wisely. I feel you're so OOC you might as well be my own OC.**

**Ugh. I jus reaaally wanna **_**DESTROY**_** Pichoncho. Like, smash him underfoot while Kumori watches. I forget to put him in a lot (bet yall noticed) and then when (if) I realize this I have to go back and put him in, and that's annoying. Doesn't matter that he didn't even appear in here.**

**Totally off-topic topic! I read Stray Dog and Never enD, by VanRah! Look at her deviantart stuff, pretty cool :D The dudes are pretty, too! Her manga is on , where yall can TOOOTALLY check out Rumplestiltskin and Death Brigade, too. The site is cool, they let you put your manga on there, and they sometimes publish for you too, if it's good. That's the exception though, not the rule.**

**Also off topic-ish, but… I've decided where imma put Kumori! As in, what manga (no anime, since that's costly [but cool T^T] ) world of mine she's gonna appear in, cuz I like her character and wanna reuse her, ya know? So, if she ever appears in the real world, in an actual MANGA, it will be one called "Aria of Renascence" ^^ You'll know its me since I plan on using "usage-strike" as my pen name or whatever for all the manga I (will hopefully) get onto paper and out into the world. Her background and history will be pretty much the same. My other OC Ailee will (hopefully, since I still needa get around to all that manga I wanna do…) appear in "Revenant Wings," this other thing I've been meaning to start (had the idea for forever naow, it seems). She'll **_**also**_** have relatively the same background/history.**

**Oh, right. Ailee. Chapter 2 for that one will be sorta like chapter 31.5 for this, since I didn't wanna post up the same material twice (redundant, right?). So, yall can go read that one real quick if ya want, later, when I post it up. Optional, of course.**

**Thazal for this time's long AN, which nearly rivaled the chapter itself. Damn my long ANs that take up most of the word count.**


End file.
